


The Golden Stranger: Redux

by MegaKat



Series: The Golden Stranger: Redux [1]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But it's gonna be FUN AS HELL when I reveal it!, Bwahahahaha! Not hard to guess which pairing, F/M, Falling In Love, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Guess what party people? I'm changing a pairing in this story, Love Confessions, Near Death, Rewrite, Saving the World, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:52:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7406275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegaKat/pseuds/MegaKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A complete and total rewrite of The Golden Stranger, the first DBZ/SM fanfic I ever wrote, which had way too much fucking OOC bullshit in it. So much that I felt embarrassment when I reread it this week. The smut was also embarrassingly short and blah. This rewrite is going to fix all of that, along with a certain pairing that I was ok with until I started crack-shipping the fuck out of Nappami. Heh... I bet you can guess which pairing's getting changed now, eh?</p><p>With that said, *ahem* the summary-- </p><p>Usagi's been captured by two old enemies that she thought were gone for good. Enemies that she thought had left on good terms. But when jealousy overtakes common sense and Ail decides to kidnap and torture her instead of asking for her help, An's planning ensures Usa's demise. She's left with only one regret, and her final request to the ginzuishou is to help her confess her love to the man that's been fighting crime at her side for the last year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, yall!! First off, thank you. Thank you to everyone that messaged me or commented on stories with messages of concern or worry about my well-being. I've not been so great over the last six months or more. I had a couple of mini-strokes, which fried my short-term memory, and made it extremely difficult to focus on anything like writing stories, since I would forget everything I'd done the day before. It pretty much goes without saying that that problem was extremely discouraging, not to mention, depressing. All my drive to write was pretty much completely fucking gone. I mean, just gone. All of it. I've reread a lot of my stories during that time, and I've enjoyed them, so that's something, right? But until tonight, on my way home from work, I had absolutely NO drive to write. About a week ago, there was a glimmer of it, and that was brought about by MoonMageGoddess's newest story, and that glimmer got a little brighter everytime she updated it. Then again a few days ago, AquaTonic suddenly reappeared after a 3 year hiatus. She's rewriting Snatched on FFN if anyone's interested! It was a REALLY GOOD story that she stopped writing in order to pursue writing books, much like I'm trying to do. Then tonight, the beginning of this story simply came to me as I was driving home. I'd been planning on rewriting TGS for YEARS, but never got around to it. So.... without further ado, I present to you, me. Me, getting back on the horse, by doing something new with something old. I hope yall enjoy it.

_“Hey, moon goddess.”_

_Cracking her eyes open against the light of a golden ki illuminating the walls of her prison, Usagi blinked them in utter disbelief before the image of the Golden Warrior blurred due to the tears filling her eyes. “Stranger,” she whimpered, “you… you came for me?”_

_She couldn’t see him anymore, the light around him simply hurt her eyes too badly after a week in the dark, and Usa was forced to shut them tightly as she felt his large, sword-calloused hand pushing her filthy, disgusting hair out of her face. “Of course I did,” he whispered insistently in reply, his voice as tender as his fingertips as that strange, comforting, purring sound—a sound he’d only made a handful of times before, and only during the last few months—filling the room along with the light from his ki. “You really think I’d leave you here to die? That I wouldn’t turn the entire fucking planet upside-down searching for you?”_

_“No,” she replied hoarsely, “but… but I thought that no one would find me. But you…”_

_“I did,” Stranger finished for her. “Moon… I’ll **always** find you,” he promised as he gathered her up in his arms, carefully handling her as if she was the most fragile, precious thing in the world… as if she was the most precious thing in **his** world. “I love you,” he breathed against her lips before pressing a brief, gentle kiss to them. “I love you, Moon, and I’ll never leave your side again, I swear it. Now, let’s get the hell out of here. Sound good?”_

_“Stranger… I lo—“_

“NOPE! NO MORE OF THAT, MOON BITCH!”

                Combined with the screaming right in her ear, the lash of the whip and the crack it made as it flayed some more of her flesh from her back jerked her right out of the only comfort Usagi had left to her, and she shrieked in agony. Or rather, she _tried_ to shriek—her voice box had decided on the second day that enough was enough, and with a searing, tearing feeling in her throat as she’d screamed bloody murder in reaction to having a fingernail ripped off, she’d been reduced to screaming silently, her mouth opened wide to let it loose, though only air and a whisper were the only things anyone heard.

                “Well, I see your larynx is still on vacation,” the male voice to the right and above her sighed in annoyance. “That’s such a fucking bummer! The only thing that got me off more than making you bleed was listening to you scream, you know that? Sis!? Hey! SIS!” He called out into the darkness while the blonde lying on the nasty floor of a control room in the city sewer cried in shallow, shuddering breaths, silent all but for a labored wheezing and a wet, crackling sound that came from deep in her chest. “I know you’re there and I’ll just keep shouting until you answer me! DAMN IT, AN, ANSWER ME!” He yelled after a full minute of waiting silently.

                As Usagi absently wondered for a moment what the crackling sound in her chest meant and she tried in vain to grasp at a whisper of a memory from her current anatomy class, she heard a silky, feminine voice reply from the shadows—a voice she hadn’t heard in what had to be at least a day. Maybe more… hell, maybe less. Time was strange when one was being tortured around the clock in a round-the-clock lightless prison, with no means of telling the time.

                “ _What_!?” That smooth voice sighed, the voice of a woman that was wearily humoring a persistent, spoiled child. “Don’t tell me she’s dead… wait, no. I can hear her breathing. Sounds like she’s going to die soon, though,” An added in mild annoyance.

                “What? Really!?” Her brother asked in a mixture of surprise and disappointment. “Damn it! But I’m not through playing with her!”

                “Ail,” she replied patiently, her heels clicking on the wet concrete as her voice drew closer, “if you don’t want your toys to break, you really ought to not play with them so roughly. Besides, we need her dead, anyway. It’s the only way we’re going to get the ginzuishou out of her… if she was telling the truth, that is.” An had already counseled her older brother-slash-lover on the drawbacks of torture several times, but she loved being right more than pretty much anything else, so she figured one more time of ‘I told you so’ couldn’t hurt matters. “After all, if you beat someone long enough, they’ll tell you the sky’s red if they think it’ll make you stop. You really should have listened to me and brought her Senshi down here, too, instead of just killing them. Then you could’ve been positive that she was telling the truth.”

                “Her Senshi weren’t even helping her fight anymore!” Ail protested for the millionth time, just as he had whenever An had brought up the drawbacks of torture. “I told you, Sis, they didn’t care about her anymore, and she probably felt the same way! The only person we could’ve _possibly_ used to get any information out of her would’ve been that Golden Warrior guy!” He finished indignantly in reaction to the hot, boiling jealousy he felt whenever he thought about the blond warrior that had been running rampant around the city with Sailor Moon. “Chiba Mamoru doesn’t even care about her anymore! He doesn’t care about anyone except himself and that bimbo he’s been dating in America!”

                “Phhht, why are you yelling at me about it? _You’re_ the one that wouldn’t take my advice, Ail. _You’re_ the one that decided that beating the information out of her would be more effective than just asking her to use the ginzuishou to heal the Tree of Life. _You’re_ the one that had to get all fucking jealous when you saw her with the Golden Warrior—and because of _you_ , the Tree of Life is going to die… unless we can get the crystal out of her body. And if the tree dies, _we_ die. So lose the tone, dear brother. I’m sick and tired of hearing it when this was completely _your_ bright fucking idea! Now… _why_ in the gods’ names did you yell for me? I was _trying_ to take a nap!”

                “I thought she was trying to say something while I was questioning her,” he lied smoothly, choosing not to comment on his sister’s accusations in favor of getting what he wanted. “But I can’t hear her because of her busted voice box. I want you to drop the spells that are keeping the ginzuishou from healing her… for… I don’t know, about a full day or so. Just long enough for her to get her voice back.”

                “We don’t even know for sure if she has it,” An reminded him with a roll of her eyes.

                “An, don’t play stupid,” Ail huffed with a roll of his own eyes towards her. “This is a brilliant idea and you know it. The ginzuishou will try to heal her if you temporarily cancel out the spells—if she has it, that is. If she was lying, then we’ll know it for sure if there’s no improvement to her voice or any of the wounds I’ve inflicted.”

                It was a good idea, but An would be damned if she’d admit it, especially after Ail had gotten them into such a mess that could leave them dead in a matter of days. She didn’t like Usagi—she never really had, for obvious reasons—but even through the possessive jealousy she felt for her brother, she’d seen the sense of approaching Sailor Moon to ask for her help… rather than beating her to death to procure the crystal that would heal the steadily dying Tree of Life.

                However, what was done was done, so An waved a hand to dispel the carefully woven containment spells she’d constructed after Ail had abducted Usagi from her college—spells that had kept the ginzuishou from fully healing its carrier.

                At least, that was what she and her brother _thought_ , anyway. In truth, the ginzuishou _had_ been healing Usagi… but only at a snail’s pace and a fraction of its usual power, and the moment the spells were lowered, it glowed brightly within her chest, its light temporarily blinding both of Usa’s foes with its intensity.

                “Goddamn it, I’d forgotten how fucking _bright_ that thing can be!” Ail complained as he backed away into the shadows to join his sister.

                “You and me both,” An agreed. “Come on, set a couple Cardians to keep an eye on her. You should rest,” she sighed as her love for her brother overcame her anger with him. He had botched everything, yes. They would likely die along with the Tree of Life because of his rash actions, yes. But even with all the blame she’d directed at her brother, he was all she had. Just as she was all he had… despite his persistent, possessive feelings for Sailor Moon. “We should both rest. We need to conserve our energy.”

                “I gathered some from her while she dreaming,” Ail offered as he grasped his sister’s hand. With guilt in his eyes for his impetuous, selfish blunder, he gave her nearly all of it, along with a tender kiss to her lips. “No,” he insisted when An opened her mouth to protest and tell him to keep more of it for himself. “I’m fine. I took some off of her late last night,” he lied. “I will come and take a nap with you, though. It’s not like she’ll be able to escape; even if the crystal’s healing her as fast as it’s able, she’s so weak that it would take _days_ for her to gain enough strength to escape.”

#######################################

                As Ail was kissing An and then leading her to the Tree of Life for a nap, Usagi was fighting for just enough consciousness in order to communicate with the ginzuishou. _No,_ she told it weakly, as it immediately began to work its healing magic on her, and Usagi felt a maddening, healing itch encompass the entirety of her back. _Don’t. Just let me die. Please… please… just let me die._

                _Princess, you are needed,_ the crystal protested calmly. _There are those that love you, those that would be broken-hearted if you died._

_Stranger…_

_Stranger most of all,_ it informed her soothingly. _You may not have seen it, but I have. He loves you. He loves you with all his heart, and if you die, I have no doubt that he will take his own life after exacting his revenge on your enemies._

Usagi didn’t want him die—it was the last thing she wanted in the world, next to the idea of Stranger in any kind of pain, physical or emotional. But she was so tired. So very, very tired… and death… death would be a blessing at this point. Death would be a release from her torment, from the pain of her broken legs, arms, and ribs… and the tearing sensation she still felt whenever she tried to scream or speak above a whisper. Death would be freedom. Death would be sheer, total bliss in comparison to lying face-down in her own bodily fluids because lying on her back was so painful that she would faint from the agony. Death would mean an end to a week of starvation, an end to being forced to drink the filthy, disgusting water that she’d refused the first two days, only for her survival instincts to finally force her to drink it in huge, greedy gulps as Ail and An had laughed at her, had informed her that there was surely some sewage in the dirty bowl that the former of the two had held to her parched, cracked lips. Death would mean a release from the tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with six broken ribs… and everything to do with exposure, her damp prison, the mold growing on the walls, and the sewage that flowed approximately thirty feet away.

                _Death would mean never seeing him again, princess. Death would mean never feeling his arms around you. Death would mean never holding him, kissing him, or confessing your love for him. Death would mean never hearing him confess his love in return._

 _I know,_ Usagi replied brokenly, sobbing silently as she clung to the thought of declaring her feelings after over six months of admitting to herself that she was deeply, irrevocably in love with him… as she clung to the hope of hearing the same in return.

But she couldn’t do it anymore. She just couldn’t. He had no idea where she was, and because Rei had been out of school sick on the day she’d been abducted after her afternoon classes, the Senshi probably hadn’t even known she was missing for at least a day. Usagi wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Ail and An had killed them, but she did believe An when she’d overheard the woman telling her brother that there was no way for the Senshi to sense the ginzuishou’s resonance. She’d used some kind of spell to keep anyone from sensing her in that manner… and of course, Usa had forgotten to take her henshin broach and her communicator on the day they’d kidnapped her.

Rescue would never come, and Usagi knew in her gut that the only way she’d escape was under her own power. She’d known that since day one… and Ail had gleefully broken her legs after the first escape attempt. He’d broken her arms after the second, when she’d nearly dragged herself to a ladder to climb out.

Even a full day’s healing wouldn’t be enough to give her the strength she needed to escape, and Usagi felt an unexpected calm wash over her as she thought of the only regret that she would die with. _Silver crystal… we both know that there’s no getting out of this,_ she whispered sadly. _Please… I beg of you… don’t heal me. Instead, would you use that energy to fulfill a last request? Please,_ she added weakly when the ginzuishou didn’t answer right away.

 _Yes, Serenity,_ it finally answered dutifully, though its tone was mournful. The princess was right, unfortunately; the crystal could heal her throat, her pneumonia, and mend her broken bones and her back about halfway during the allotted time… but the chances of rescue were slim to none. Healing her would only prolong her agony. Healing her wouldn’t be a kindness… it would be nothing but cruelty. _I’ll do anything you ask of me, you know that._

_Take me to him. Let me tell him. Please… don’t let me die with my only regret left unresolved._

_Princess… I’m sorry, but An did not dispel the shield. I’m unable to teleport you anywhere._

_I know,_ Usagi replied with a ghost of a rueful smile. _I’m not stupid. Take my mind to his, crystal. If he’s sleeping, I can enter his dreams. I can see him one last time._

 _You need to be asleep for this to work, Serenity,_ the crystal reminded her. _Shall I put you under?_

_Yes… and if you can, add a spell to keep me under, no matter what. Let me die dreaming of him… please, crystal. Let me die happy._

There was a prolonged hesitation from the ginzuishou, and Usagi assumed it was simply reluctant to let her die, unaware that the all-powerful, sentient artifact inside of her was doing as it was told. It was weaving a spell around its princess, a spell to keep her fast asleep no matter how much Ail beat her, no matter how much he screamed right in her ear, no matter what kind of new, horrible methods of torture he tried to use on her.

But it wove two extra bits into the simple spell: one, a thread woven in with the rest of the main threads of the spell, a thread that would give Usagi nothing but wonderful dreams about Stranger, even after he’d woken. She would stay with him. She would die happy.

The second bit that the crystal wove into the spell was a condition that Usagi didn’t need to know about—a condition that the silver crystal knew was pointless, but without it, the crystal didn’t think it could just let Usagi stay asleep and die. Because if rescue _did_ arrive, and Usagi remained asleep with no means to revive her…

 _I’ll let you die happy,_ the ginzuishou promised gently, surrounding Usagi’s mind in its love for her. _He’s asleep, princess… go to him. And then… sleep with him. Forever._

 _Thank you,_ Usagi replied as she felt happiness, hope and love fill her to the brim for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and she sensed herself drifting off to sleep as her mind was pulled off towards a bright, golden star burning in the distance… that star was a life force that could only belong to one man, and the last Lunarian fell asleep with a peaceful smile on her face as she felt his familiar warmth drawing closer. _Thank you._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all yall's kind words! Seriously, I really, really appreciate it! Enjoy this chapter, too, because it's like, 4x the length of the last one! Shit's about to get real!

As his hand slowed in shoveling bites of his late supper into his mouth, Trunks emitted another huge, gaping yawn, covering his mouth when his mother gave him a look that told him to mind his table manners. “Sorry,” he muttered before taking another bite.

“That’s the eighth yawn in less than ten minutes, boy,” his father remarked between bites. “I know I didn’t work you _that_ damn hard in the gravity room. You going soft?”

“No, Dad,” Trunks huffed. “Just…” He yawned again, his eyes full of confusion in reaction to his inexplicable bout of sudden yawning. “…sleepy all of a sudden,” he finished once the yawn had ended, setting his fork down on his plate after studying the remaining food for a few critical moments. He suddenly didn’t feel hungry anymore; he merely wanted to sleep to the point that it was crossing over from want into desperate need. He was completely and utterly exhausted, he felt weak from head to toe, as if his body was ready to shut down with or without him and simply give him the finger, as if to say, “fuck you, buddy, we’re doing this with or without you… so get on board or prepare to hit the floor.” As he thought all of that over, a sudden, unexpected, light punch to his shoulder broke him out of his daze to wearily turn his head towards his father and rub at his heavy eyelids. “Wha?”

“You dozed off for two minutes,” Vegeta snorted.

“Did not,” Trunks mumbled.

“Yeah, you did,” his sister giggled as she extended the phone in her hand towards him to present him with a snapshot of himself, eyes closed, head nodding forward, mouth hanging slack-jawed and wide open, his entire face drooping mere inches from his mashed potatoes. “Go to bed, you dork. You’re clearly exhausted.”

“Can’t,” he sighed, “I was gonna patrol. I haven’t seen her in a week and I haven’t been able to shake this feeling that something’s wrong.”

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Vegeta stated flatly, hiding his very real concern for his son and the woman that Trunks should have already mated months ago… if he’d only grow a pair and confess the fact that he was deeply, irrevocably in love with Sailor Moon. And thanks to Trunks’s line of questioning nearly a year ago, Vegeta was almost completely sure that they’d felt the pull as well. “If you’ve felt like something was wrong for a whole week, why haven’t you hunted her down?”

“Because we don’t know each other’s true identities, Father. I’ve told you this. Other than the moon hanging in the sky, I have no way at all to tell where she’s at… or if she’s even in the city at all,” Trunks sighed worriedly before yawning yet again and sullenly picking at his food with his fork. “Trust me, if I had a single clue as to where she lived, I would’ve already flown to her neighborhood and scoured the area for her ki.”

It went without saying that he’d tried his best to track down her ki already, so Vegeta merely nodded as he thought long and hard about how to help his son find the moon woman. It was unlike her to go so long without appearing in the city—his family might think that he didn’t pay attention to them or give a shit about their personal lives, but much to the contrary, Vegeta paid very, very close attention to everything they said, their habits, who they hung out with, and what they did in their spare time.

And for the last year, Trunks had been patrolling the city almost nightly with Sailor Moon, fighting crime and saving innocent people. Vegeta had even followed them at a distance a few times over the last three months in order to take his measure of the blonde that had ensnared his son, and after seeing her fight and the way they both looked at each other when they thought the other wasn’t paying attention, he’d been satisfied… and Vegeta was positive that it was only a matter of time before the two of them were mated.

Of course, however, he hadn’t counted on his own son’s stubbornness—something he’d most definitely gotten from both of his parents—and a persistent, shy awkwardness with Sailor Moon that could’ve _only_ been inherited from the crown prince of the Saiyan race. He wasn’t awkward with any other female, oh no… just the one he’d felt the pull for, just as Vegeta had been awkward with Bulma after looking her in the eye for a little too long on Namek. He, too, had fought destiny for a good long while, but in the end, destiny had won. It would win with Trunks and Sailor Moon, too… eventually.

“You know what college she goes to, right?” Vegeta questioned as he watched his son’s eyelids drooping for a second time. “Trunks!” He snapped, “wake the fuck up! If you’ve been having a bad feeling about your woman, you ought to trust your instincts and go look for her,” he continued when his son snapped awake and paid attention. “Now tell me, what college does she attend?”

“Um… Juuban,” he recalled after a moment of remembering a single conversation where she’d slipped up and mentioned JCC. They were always extremely careful not to mention anything about their personal lives, and other than a handful of slips, both of them had done extremely well in being careful not to reveal anything that might give away their true identities. “Yeah… JCC. She was late one morning and she said she ran for five solid minutes to get there before her math professor locked the door.”

“Do you think you can sense her ki when she’s a civilian?”

“No, I’ve tried that already,” Trunks sighed. “I can’t even get a bead on the ginzuishou—usually, I can sense it no matter what time of day it is. She’d strangle me if she knew that I could track it, but I actually have a pretty good idea where she lives, Father.” He sighed at that and shook his head worriedly. “I haven’t picked up anything from the silver crystal in seven days, though. Absolutely nothing at all… it’s like she’s dropped off the face of the Earth.”

“Something’s wrong, then,” Vegeta stated. “You go sleep, boy. You’re exhausted. No, shut up,” the prince added when Trunks tried to protest, “you’re useless when you’re this tired and we both know it. Go sleep, and I’ll wake you in five or six hours. Then you can go out and hunt for her.”

“Your father’s right, Trunks,” Bulma chimed in as she read her mate through the mating bond and sensed Vegeta’s deep worry for both her son and the woman that Trunks had fallen in love with. “Tell you what… you go sleep, and your father’ll go out and see if he can sense anything. How does that sound?” Rolling her eyes, Bulma told Vegeta plainly through the bond that she wasn’t stupid—the prince had already planned on doing exactly that, and he should know better than to think for even a moment that he could hide it from her. After being mated to him for twenty years—almost exactly to the date of Trunks’s first birthday—she could read him like a book.

“Stop giving me that fucking look, woman,” Vegeta huffed, “and I _might_ go look for her.”

“Uh-huh. Sure, Geetz. Whatever you say.”

“Thank you, Father,” Trunks murmured gratefully, giving Vegeta’s shoulder a squeeze as he stood from his seat, just as his father muttered something about Bulma and pushy women in general. “Really, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. You’ll wake me if you find anything, right?”

“Probably,” the prince huffed. “Go to bed. You look like shit, son.”

“Yeah, yeah… I’m going. But please, Dad, promise me that—“

“I’ll wake you if I learn anything important,” Vegeta snapped, rolling his eyes as he watched Trunks’s slip half-shut. The boy was clearly fighting sleep, and he watched Trunks with a critical eye as he nodded and left the room, dragging his feet before finally stopping at the couch and falling onto it heavily. _Bulma, I’ve been watching him all week, and he’s barely slept a wink, even when he’s tried to. He’s been too worried to sleep. But now, suddenly, he’s dozing on his feet?_

 _Vegeta,_ Bulma replied calmly, though she was mildly surprised by his usage of the bond, rather than speaking aloud, _his exhaustion’s likely just caught up with him. That’s all._

 _No,_ Vegeta muttered thoughtfully _, the boy’s half Saiyan. I know for a fact that he can go a few weeks like that before it catches up with him. I’ve seen him do it. Whatever **this** is… it’s not natural. Something’s wrong… and I want you to keep an eye on him while I go to the city, understand? Contact me through the bond if something’s amiss. Changes in his vital signs, anything like that. I’m going to visit an old friend._

 _Oh? But I thought that you were—_ Bulma stopped herself short at that, recalling a tidbit of hilarious information that Vegeta had shared with her about two years prior, and she snorted in amusement despite the gravity of the conversation.   _Never mind, I gotcha_. _Sorry for laughing, it’s just that the idea of him being all head over heels in love with a woman quite literally half his size… it’s fucking hilarious!_

Vegeta couldn’t help but agree with her there, his lips twitching up in his signature smirk as he nodded once. _The big oaf’s turned into a gods damned sap over her, too. Last time we spoke, he still hadn’t fully claimed her. He’s terrified of breaking her in half, apparently… even though she’s expressed her willingness to try._

_Oh, come on, Vegeta. It’s actually rather sweet of him to be so concerned for her physical welfare. You can’t tell me that you never **once** worried about how easily you could break me if things got out of hand?_

_No,_ he lied. _I’m a Saiyan prince, woman, and you damn well know it. My control outstrips his by a hundred-fold, if not more._ Truth be told, Vegeta had worried immensely about hurting her the first time he’d given in to the pull, and even more-so after he’d ascended to Super Saiyan. Hell, he still worried every time he went through the burning, and he’d probably continue to do so for the rest of his life. “I’m going now,” he stated aloud, ignoring the sappy, loving smile on his mate’s face, even as he came around the table and dropped a kiss onto the crown of her head. “Watch over our son, Bulma.”

“I will, love,” she promised as she turned her face up and pulled his down to hers for a slow, tender kiss, sighing in happy surprise when Vegeta cupped her cheek in his hand and didn’t pull away almost immediately. Usually, he was so squeamish of displays of affection in front of other people—even their own children—but he kissed Bulma for a full ten seconds before drawing away, ignoring the fact that Bra was watching them with a grin.

“I’ll be back before it’s time to wake Trunks. Bra… you keep an eye on him, too.”

Holy shit, if Vegeta was asking his daughter for such a thing, he was definitely worried! “Yes, Dad,” she replied instantly, her lips turned down in a concerned frown that mirrored her father’s. “I’ll call you if anything seems off about him.”

“Good girl.” And with that, Vegeta ascended to Super Saiyan Blue, a further sign of how deeply he was worried for his son. True, Trunks’s behavior that evening and Sailor Moon’s week-long absence could be nothing but a coincidence, but when it came to the pull, the Prince of All Saiyans had long abandoned the notion of coincidences. When it came to the pull, everything that happened between both effected parties was linked. Everything between them had everything to do with their destined pair-bonding… and _nothing_ to do with coincidence.

###############################################

“Stranger!? **_Stranger_**!!”

The man in question spun around in complete and total confusion, blinking at his lack of surroundings after losing his fight to stay concious long enough to make it to his room. No, he’d just barely made it to the couch, had collapsed upon it, and then everything had vanished. _Everything_ … leaving him in a void of white that reminded him of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber… only there _was_ something there in the void.

Or rather, it was some _one_ , and they were running towards him from far away, calling out a name that only _one_ person ever called him. “ _Moon!?”_ He yelled out in confusion. His first reaction was a shred of panic, but once he’d assured himself that his hair was gold and not lavender, he flew to her without another moment’s hesitation as soon as he recognized the mixture of joy and terror in her voice. Joy because she was always thrilled to see him, no matter what… and terror because… well, he honestly didn’t know, but he was definitely going to ask her about it, along with a line of questioning about where in the hell she’d been for a week and why she hadn’t contacted him somehow. Unless… unless this _was_ her attempt to contact him. Contacting him because she was in trouble.

That only made him move even faster, and when he reached her, Trunks wrapped her tightly in his arms, his tail winding around her waist, his face buried in her hair to draw in her scent and assure himself that he couldn’t smell blood—hers or anyone else’s. “Moon… what’s wrong?” He asked as he looked down at her. She was smiling and her cheeks were flushed with pleasure, but her eyes were sad, mournful, and brimming with tears, and when Trunks frowned and wiped at a tear that escaped, she threw her arms around him tightly, her face buried in the black tank top he always wore when he fought crime. Yes, something was definitely wrong. He could feel her tears soaking into his shirt, and the woman he loved was crying openly in huge, wracking sobs, trembling against him, her fear peppering her typically sweet and innocent scent. “Moon… what’s wrong?” He repeated, though the exact same words were brimming with worry that he no longer bothered to hide. Something was wrong… very, very wrong.

“Stranger, this isn’t a dream,” she choked out as she drew in his scent, her senses heightened due to the knowledge that this would be the last time they would speak. This was her last chance to tell him the truth, her last chance to confess how she’d felt about him for the last six months. “No, please… just hold me,” she added meekly when he tried to draw away, “and whatever you do, Stranger, please **_don’t_** wake up. _Please_ , try your best not to, ok? It’s important that you stay with me here for as long as possible.”

“Alright,” he agreed gently, bending his face down to her hair a second time to do the same thing she was doing, breathing in her light, innocent scent as her fear receded in reaction to the soft, reassuring purr filling the air around them—something he’d given up fighting against six months ago, after her stupid, asshole of a boyfriend had broken up with her and she’d come to him in tears. Now he purred for her practically all the time, but she’d never complained about it, and after a few weeks, Trunks had ceased being embarrassed about it, especially after she’d confessed that she rather liked the sound, and that it made her feel safe. “Moon… are you using the ginzuishou to do this? To talk to me in my sleep?” He asked as he ran his fingers through her hair and recalled his unnatural, sudden exhaustion at the dinner table, his fingers idly travelling down the vulnerable line of her spine as his eyes took in and appreciated the white, regal dress she wore and the feathered wings that started at her shoulder blades and trailed to the floor.

“Yes. There were spells cast around me to keep me from using the crystal, but they dropped them so that the crystal could heal me. I begged it not to heal me, though… instead, I asked the crystal to let me speak with you one last time, because… because I…” Usagi hesitated then, swallowing hard as she summoned all of her courage. This was it. This was her last and only chance to tell him the truth. To tell Stranger that she loved him… and that she was sorry that she’d only found the courage to do so as she lay dying. “It’s fulfilling my dying wish,” she whispered as she turned her face up to his, cupping his cheek in a porcelain hand as she simply gazed into his eyes and memorized his strong jaw, his high cheekbones, the odd, deep, beautiful shade of his blue eyes and the way her stomach always flip-flopped when she looked into them for more than a moment or two… and finally, his pink, kissable lips. Lips that she’d ached to kiss for so long, but had never summoned the bravery to. This would be her last chance to look at him, and Usagi’s lower lip trembled as she memorized his features, her thumb tenderly tracing his jawline as she summoned her courage and told herself that he deserved to know that she loved him.

“Stranger… I love you,” she whispered as he remained stunned into silence by the news that she was dying. “It was the only regret I had… not telling you that I loved you. That I’ve been in love with you for a very long time. I should have said it sooner, but… I was a coward,” she breathed sadly. “I’m so sorry, Stranger. Please… please forgive me for never telling you… and for waiting until now to tell you.”

Courage, cowardice, and forgiveness were the last things on the mind of Trunks Briefs as he stared into the eyes of the only woman he’d ever loved, and his purr ground to a halt as it was replaced with an angry growl. “Where are you and _what the fuck_ is going on!?” He snapped out angrily, fighting the urge to shake her until her teeth rattled. “I haven’t seen you in _seven days_ , Moon! What happened!? _Where are you!?_ You said that they had spells up so that you couldn’t use the crystal—who is ‘they’ and **_why_** _haven’t you used your communicator!?”_ The sight of her eyes filling with more tears and the sound of a heartbroken, hopeless sob eased some of Trunks’s fury, as well as his vice-like grip on her, and he relented when she choked out something unintelligible between a series of sobs that made her shake from the force of them. He also renewed his grip on her when her knees gave out due to her terrified shaking, and Trunks fell to his as he held her tightly to him with his arms and his tail. “Shit… Moon, I’m sorry. Please, forgive me and calm down, angel… shh… it’s ok. I’m not angry with you. I’m… I’m fucking _terrified_ ,” he confessed. “You can’t die. _I won’t let it happen,_ do you understand me? Please just tell where you’re at and I’ll come and get you.”

“The… the sewers,” she choked out, “but… but there’s _miles_ of tunnels, Stranger, and I don’t know where I am. I’m dying… and the crystal promised that I wouldn’t wake again, that it would let me sleep… and that I’d dream of you, even after you’ve woken and this psychic link is broken. It promised that it would let me die happy… that I’d die dreaming of you,” she repeated, her cheeks reddening as his purr resumed. Only this time, that comforting sound was mixed with something else… a pattern she’d only heard twice before. A pattern that made her feel warm all over and think of sweet kisses in the dark, a noise that made her itch to feel his hands on her bare skin, and her own on his.

Despite the fact that his beast was touched—and encouraged— by the fact that Moon’s idea of dying happy meant dying in his arms, Trunks’s mind was racing at a breakneck pace, trying its best to create an effective rescue plan. “Moon, tell me what happened. Please. I have to at least _try_ , you understand that, right? Wouldn’t you do the same for me? Wouldn’t you refuse to leave me for dead, no matter what?” He questioned insistently.

“You… you said that you love me,” Trunks added softly, his eyes full of emotion as they bored into hers. “Moon… sweetheart… I feel the same. I love you,” he confessed breathlessly, his heart pounding a mile a minute as he said the words he’d ached to say for a year. “I’ve been in love with you since the moment I met you… and when you love someone, you don’t just accept that they’re going to die. You fight with everything inside of you to save them.  _R’sha_ … I’ll fight for _you_ until my last breath, I swear it on my tail.” With that, Trunks finally did the one thing he’d wanted to do more than anything for a year; he bent his head to hers and kissed her firmly, his tail winding around her waist and a soft, shuddering groan escaping him when she returned it ardently and let loose a quiet whimper of surrender, her hand at his lower back pressing his groin tightly to hers in a clear offer of everything she had… everything she was.

“I love you,” he breathed against her lips when he finally broke the kiss, proud of himself for such a display of willpower when he reminded his beast that there would be plenty of time for making love to her later, and that right now, time was of the essence. They needed to make every moment in this white void count. Hadn’t someone said in one of his classes that an hour in a dream was equal to a full night’s sleep? “I love you and I’m not going to let you die, Moon. Now… do you know where you were when—“

“I was at school,” she replied, cutting him off as he wiped gently at her tears and she leaned into the hands framing her face, deciding to allow herself to feel the fragile hope that he just _might_ be able to save her. If _anyone_ could save her, it would be Stranger. “JCC. I’d finished my afternoon classes and it was getting dark. I was attacked by Ail, an enemy I’d fought as a teenager. I thought that he and his sister had turned over a new leaf and gone home. They’d been watching me for weeks, waiting for me to slip up… I forgot my communicator, the one I wear on my wrist, and my henshin broach. He attacked because I couldn’t transform or call for help.”

“Did they say what they wanted?” Stranger asked, resting his forehead to hers as his hands absently petted and soothed her and he resisted the desire to kiss her again, to strip her down, to distract her from the fear that had yet to completely leave her scent or her eyes.

“The crystal, but… it’s inside of me. The only hope they have of getting it is by killing me, and even then, I don’t think it’s a sure thing, which is why I’m still alive. I… I told them that when… when Ail…” Usagi stopped there and swallowed down tears, her hands tightening into fists where they clutched at the cloth covering his back, trembling as she vividly remembered the pain lancing through her with every lash of the whip, every cut of the knife, and every blow of his fists.

“Shhh… calm down, moon goddess. It’s not important right now. What’s important is telling me anything you can remember about your location, and telling me what’s changed in the last few minutes. I’m positive you would’ve contacted me already if it was possible, right?” He asked, rewarding her with a short, tender kiss when she nodded. “So, what changed?” He pressed as he broke the kiss and nuzzled her shoulder, his purr strengthening as his beast filled his mind with images of Trunks sinking his teeth into the creamy flesh warming his mouth.

“They need the crystal to save their own lives,” Usagi answered slowly. “I… I think that they’re hesitant to kill me on the off-chance that my death won’t give them what they want, so An dropped the spells that were keeping the crystal from effectively healing me, even though it _was_ keeping me alive without their knowledge. But yeah… that’s what changed. There’s a chance that they’ll die if I do, and they know it. That and… and Ail… he saw me with you and… he figured it out. That I’m in love with you. He might have even figured out that you’re in love with me,” she added with a blush and a slow, shy smile when Stranger murmured something in that strange, guttural language that he sometimes spoke in when he was angry or frustrated... only this time, he was whispering in her ear, and his tone sounded anything but angry… but there _was_ a hint of frustration there. The sexual kind. And it curled her toes, even as she continued to explain. “Ail was in love with me a long time ago, and now he’s jealous. I heard An saying on the first day that her plan was to ask me for my help. She was yelling at Ail for beating me unconscious… I was faking that I was still out cold at the time. He finally got her to agree to his plan, since what was done was done and couldn’t be taken back. That he was positive I’d never help them after what he’d done… and An… during her first turn to watch me while Ail rested, she told me that she’d decided not to let me live. That she’d rather risk both her and Ail’s deaths than take any chance of Ail letting me live… letting me live under the condition that… that I—I’d be his.

“No, Stranger,” she whispered as she embraced him tightly in reaction to a quiet, possessive growl, “I’d never submit to him. An doesn’t know, but… Ail already made that offer. On the first day, after An… after she cut me out of anger. Out of jealousy. Ail saw what she’d done to my face, and he relented. He offered to kill her and let me live if I’d be his. I told him to shove it up his ass,” she recalled, her lips twitching up in a ghost of a smile as she remembered her own surprise at her sudden bravery. She’d thought of Stranger in that moment— she’d thought of how she loved him, how she’d dreamed about him being her first. How he’d figure out who she really was, how he’d appear in her room late at night and seduce her with his hands, his mouth, and a quiet, heartfelt confession of love as she surrendered to him. “I told him that I loved _you_ , Stranger. _You_ and _only_ you… and that you were the _only_ man I’d ever submit to. Whenever I’ve managed to sleep,” Usagi whispered shyly, her cheeks coloring brightly, “I dreamed of you, Stranger. You’d rescue me and… and take me with you, and… and you…”

Trunks withdrew from the temptation of her creamy shoulder then, purring seductively as he took in the sight of her red cheeks and the love in her eyes, smiling when she didn’t continue, clearly too shy to finish her sentence. “Angel, as soon as I rescue you, I’m going to do exactly that,” he stated slowly, his voice soft, dark, and full of promises of slow lovemaking, of claiming her over and over until he’d fulfilled every single dream she’d ever had of him. “If you’ll have me, Moon, I have every intention of mating you. Of making you mine.”

Usagi found herself nodding before she could even consciously direct her head to do so, maintaining eye contact with him and relishing the way her stomach fluttered enticingly anytime she held his gaze. “Stranger… I want that right now,” she whispered. “Please… just in case I—“

“No,” he replied firmly, cutting her off before she could continue. “I _will_ save you, Moon. I swear it. What?” He asked incredulously when she gnawed on her lower lip nervously and looked away from him. “Don’t tell me that you don’t believe me?” Trunks had to admit that that hurt him deeply, that her lack of faith in him hurt him in a way he’d never been hurt before, in a way he hadn’t thought himself capable of being hurt. “Moon…”

The heartbreak in his voice drew Usagi’s eyes back up to his, and she shook her head before kissing him soothingly, the fingertips of both hands tracing his jawline tenderly. “Stranger, I know you’ll come for me. I know you will. But… I’m dying,” she reminded him gently. “I don’t know how much time I have left, but I _do_ know that it’s not much. I know you’ll come for me… but I can only give myself a fifty-fifty chance of being alive when you get there.” She swallowed hard then, debating whether or not to give him the full, hard, bitter truth, but it only took her a few silent moments before she decided to tell him—and to show him—just how bad off she was. “Stranger… that fifty-fifty estimate… it’s overly-optimistic. No, _please don’t_ ,” she insisted when he opened his mouth to swear yet again that he’d save her. “I… I didn’t want you to see me this way, but… you need to know. You need to know how bad it is. It would be cruel of me not to prepare you.”

“Moon, what do you—“ The last word in the sentence stuck in his throat when it tightened in horror; the beautiful, golden-haired angel in his arms had transformed into the image of a filthy, broken woman that no longer even resembled his intended. Both of her arms and legs were clearly broken, turned at awful angles that made him nauseous to look at. Every inch of her face was black and blue, her left cheek caked in blood from where An had cut her deeply—more than deep enough to scar.

That wasn’t even the worst of it.

Her clothes were in tatters, her breasts visible through the tears that had clearly been caused by knives, and slashes littered her bruised and battered torso, and the dark marks beneath her breasts were clearly a result of multiple broken ribs.

Trunks fought tears back the entire time he examined her broken body, but when she turned to show him her back, he lost the ability to keep them at bay and choked out a sob as he gingerly turned her around again to face him. There wasn’t a single centimeter of flesh on her back that hadn’t been flayed by a whip—honestly, there wasn’t even a single centimeter of flesh left remaining on her back. They’d whipped her to the point that he’d seen muscle through the layer of filth that covered every bit of her, turning creamy skin and golden hair brown, all but for the clean tracks on her face where her tears had washed it away… only to reveal hues of black, blue and the coppery reddish-brown of dried blood.

“I’m dying,” Usagi whispered, clutching at her throat, wincing at the pain that came with speaking. “It hurts to breath, Stranger… and… and there’s this sound…”

“I hear it, angel,” he breathed as he trembled in a mixture of rage, fear, love and helplessness, squeezing his eyes shut when he noticed her hands. Hands that only had two fingernails left out of ten. The other eight had clearly been ripped out. “You have pneumonia. I… I’ll take every senzu bean in the house with me when I come for you,” he promised. Yes, that was it. Focus. Focus on a plan. Focus on a way to get her out, a way to save her and make it all better. “I know that the senzu aren’t as effective for you because you’re Lunarian, but I have plenty. Four or five should fix everything, sweetheart.” He kissed her then, weeping silently for her and for the pain she’d endured, wishing in vain that he could somehow switch places with the woman he loved as she parted her cracked, bloody lips for the tongue tracing the crease of her mouth.

“Stranger,” she breathed between kisses, summoning all of her courage for what she wanted to say next, offering him a weak smile when she waved a hand to return her form to that of a clean, beautiful Lunarian princess, sighing in contended bliss when he immediately kissed her again, his lips hungry and demanding. “Please… make love to me,” Usagi whispered with every ounce of longing she felt for him. “Just once… just in case… I don’t… make it,” she continued as his kisses grew more and more ravenous with every moment that passed. “Yes,” she encouraged him as he tugged at the bodice of her gown, freeing her breasts and baring her to the waist before easing her down onto her back, pinning her feathered wings between her own body and the floor of the void. “Don’t stop, Stranger,” Usa whispered, looking him in the eye and cupping his face in her hand when he rose up to remove his tanktop and toss it aside.

Her fingers travelled south to stroke and explore the definition of his chest and stomach when he came down on top of her and resumed the eager, demanding kisses that were setting her on fire, and when he pushed her skirts to her waist and ground his cock against the juncture of her thighs, Usagi moaned into his mouth and arched into the sweet friction.

That moan encouraged him even further, and Trunks continued to kiss her as he slid a hand up a supple, bare thigh, slipping his fingers beneath the white lace of her panties to stroke her. He found her soaking wet for him, and he purred in a mixture of love, seduction, and desire as he pushed his fingers into her, only to pause when she winced… and when his fingertips sought out and discovered exactly _why_ she’d winced. “Moon goddess,” he sighed mournfully, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it doesn’t matter,” she replied truthfully, her heart in her eyes as she tried to pull him back down to her, only for Stranger to resist and shake his head slowly. “ _Please_ , Stranger,” the moon princess insisted tearfully. “Please don’t stop. I want this. I want _you_. I don’t want to die without knowing what making love with you feels like. Please?” she whispered weakly when he sighed and shook his head again.

“Angel… I want to. I do,” he assured her, “but there isn’t enough time for us to do this properly. I’ll only hurt you. It probably won’t feel good for you at all, even with a mating mark, unless I prepare you for a good, long while beforehand.” Not only that, but Trunks had only started making love to her out of a desperate need to erase the scent of her fear and the hint of it in her eyes, to try to somehow make everything better for her, even if only for a little while. “Besides,” he sighed as his common sense won, “when I do make love to you for the first time, I want it to be real. No, I know this dream is real,” he added when she opened her mouth to tell him exactly that. “I mean, I want it to be _really_ real.”

“But… but Stranger… what… what if,” Usagi choked out as she lost the ability to hold her tears back any longer. “What if the scars are bad and… and you d—don’t want—“

“Shhh, moon goddess. Shhh… it’s ok. You’re beautiful. I swear it. Trust me _, cha’dra_ ,” Trunks whispered as he lowered his lips to her throat and trailed soft, warm kisses down the long column of her neck, over her collarbone and to her shoulder, where he grazed his teeth over it eagerly. “Moon, you could be the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen, and it still wouldn’t change how I feel about you. It would never change the fact that I want you so badly that it physically hurts to resist the temptation of having you.”

“No, it’s _not_ ok!” She sobbed. “Why can’t you understand? You’ve seen what they’ve done to me!”

Trunks silenced any further protests with a kiss, and rather than keep it brief, he began to trace the crease of her lips with the tip of his tongue after a few moments, letting loose a quiet, demanding growl when she tried to speak and didn’t immediately open to him. He changed that problem quickly by sliding a hand down to her pert behind to pull her tightly to him, and as he ground his arousal against her, she gasped, allowing him the access he sought.

As he kissed her senseless while trying to convey through it every ounce of love he felt for her, Trunks reminded his beast that time was of the essence, and that if they found her before she died, there would be plenty of time for more than just kissing once she was safe. If she was sure that she wanted him as her mate, that is. Honestly, Trunks was positive that he’d be incapable of making love to her without mating her, without establishing a mating bond and—

When Trunks broke away sharply and stared down at her with wide eyes, Usagi could only crack hers open and gaze up at him in confusion, her blue orbs hazy and still tear-filled as the fingers that were clutching at his bare back continued to absently play against his warm, tanned skin. “Stranger?” She finally managed. “Please… don’t stop.”

Her arousal had turned her voice low and sultry without her knowledge, and Trunks smiled slowly at the idea he’d had and he wasted no time in presenting it to the half-naked angel in his arms. “You said that we’re sharing a psychic link right now, yes?”

“Yes, the crystal created it so I could talk to you. It’s not too hard to enter someone’s dreams, even less difficult if we know each other. When someone’s awake, however…” Usagi shrugged at that, then let loose a sigh of happiness when Stranger closed the two-inch gap to kiss her once more, arching into a calloused hand with a gasp of pleasure when it cupped a breast and his thumb traced the nipple. “Stranger…”

 _Gods help me, I’ve waited months to hear her say my name like that… please… please let me retain enough presence of mind to focus on something besides how good it would feel inside of her._ “We don’t have much time, Moon,” Trunks murmured against her lips, “so I’m not going to beat around the bush—this dream is real, as you said, which means that you can feel me as well as I can feel you, yes? Good,” he continued when she nodded breathlessly and she boldly kissed him again in a clear invitation to take her, only for Trunks to draw back after a few moments. “You can kiss me all you want in a few hours. Just listen. My people are aliens. I explained this to you after the tail incident.”

Blushing hotly at his mention of the nefarious tail incident during the first month they’d known each other, Usagi didn’t trust her voice well enough to talk without squeaking in embarrassment, and simply nodded. Yes, she knew he was a half-human, half-alien hybrid, but Stranger had never told her what race his father was, since Usagi had warned him that she might know of that race from her past life—and since Stranger had told her that full-blooded specimens of his father’s race had distinct features, Usagi knew she’d be able to immediately guess who his father was if she ever happened to run into him randomly. It had been an overly-cautious decision on both their parts, but they’d felt that it was necessary during a time when they’d wanted to keep their identities secret.

And how had the subject of his race come up in the first place? By grabbing his tail, no surprise. Stranger had scooped her up to carry her to a robbery in progress, and Usa hadn’t been paying attention, thanks to her handheld video game console. She’d grabbed at his belt for balance, which had turned out to be a tail, and had found herself pinned to the air conditioning unit in the middle of the roof they always met at. Pinned by a ridiculously strong warrior that she was already crushing on… a warrior that was fully aroused and pressing his groin intimately to hers.

As Stranger had fought every instinct screaming at him to take the woman he’d felt the pull for, Sailor Moon had stared up at him with wide eyes, trembling, apologizing endlessly and swearing that she’d had no clue that his belt was a tail, and that she’d never, ever, ever do it again.

“My people are the Saiyans,” Trunks informed her now, “and we have a custom called a mating bond. It’s a bite to the shoulder when two people mate with each other—marriage, only with the bonus of a strong psychic bond between partners.” Sailor Moon was naïve and a little airheaded at times; Trunks knew this, but he also knew that she was smart, and he nodded firmly when he watched realization dawn in her eyes. “With your permission, Moon, I’m going to put how real this dream is to the test.”

A glimmer of hope had lit inside of her at Stranger’s initial insistence that he would find her no matter what, but now that flickering light within her had grown to a strong and steady blaze. “You’ll be able to track me with it… won’t you?” Usa asked, finally daring to find the courage to really, truly hope to live more than a day or two longer… and not only mere survival, but to live with Stranger at her side for the rest of her life. “Do it,” she breathed when he nodded.

“I don’t know how well this’ll be translated over into the real world, Moon, but… you need to be sure. This is permanent… and to be honest, even if there _is_ a way to reverse it, I’ll never let you go. _Never._ You’ll be mine and we’ll be pairbonded for the rest of our lives.”

“Do it, Stranger,” Usagi replied with a soft, tender smile and an emotional kiss to his lips. “I love you. I’ve wanted this more than anything for a long time. Do it.”

Trunks had already planned on tracking her by focusing on the bright, silver ki of the ginzuishou, but if this worked, he would double their chances of rescuing her alive, especially if An changed her mind and returned to cut Moon off from the crystal once again. If this worked… then he’d be able to find her anywhere on the planet for the rest of their lives, no matter what. This would never happen again, though, period—because even if it didn’t work this time, the moment he found her and brought her home, Trunks was going to mark her as his.

“I love you, Moon,” he whispered as he tenderly grazed his lips over her bare shoulder. “My angel… my moon goddess… my mate,” he sighed happily before clamping down on the flawless skin and sinking his teeth deep.

There was a sharp mixture of pain and pleasure when his sharp Saiyan canines pierced her flesh, but Usagi’s cry had nothing to do with the pain and everything to do with the raw ecstasy that rolled through her like a tidal wave, turning her vision white and swamping her senses so that all thought of anything but Stranger was wiped from her mind. “Stranger,” she whimpered when he began to suck at the punctures, his purr louder than she’d ever heard it as his dexterous fingers trailed up the inside of her left thigh and slipped inside of her panties for a second time. “Oh… oh, that… that feels… _Stranger_!”

That soft, helpless cry of his name brought forth a groan from Trunks, but rather than succumb to his pounding desire to take her and consummate the pairbond, he concentrated on the soft, shaky moan she emitted with every suck to her shoulder and every leisurely caress to her swollen clit, releasing the former of the two only to whisper in her ear. “Come for me, sweetheart. Come for me… and then I’ll come for you,” he promised huskily, chuckling sexily into her ear at the double meaning. “Come for me,” he whispered again after a slow lick to her bleeding shoulder, his fingers now firmly rubbing the sensitive bud within her folds as he decided to clarify what he’d meant by his unintended double entendre. “Then I’m going to come and find you and make you mine in every way.”

“I love you,” Usagi responded breathlessly before lacing her fingers through his golden hair and leaning up to kiss him passionately, her hips bucking when she felt his tail slip inside of her panties to press into her virgin channel, teasing her and stretching her carefully without breaking her hymen. Only another minute passed before she finally surrendered to the mounting pleasure and moaned into his mouth, her legs wrapping around his waist as she bucked twice in his arms and then stiffened head to toe, arching against him and moaning his name in rapture, her head rolling back to expose her throat to his lips and teeth. “Stranger… Stranger, _please_!” She whimpered when he withdrew his fingers but didn’t draw her panties down to seek his own pleasure.

“I told you, _cha’dra m’yo_ ,” Trunks whispered soothingly, “that I’m going to find you before making you completely mine. I only got you off because my father’s told me what the mating bite does to the person receiving it… and because I want to, if I’m being fair,” he admitted with a tiny grin. “But right now, the clock is ticking. The more time I spend here, with you, the more likely I am to find you dead… and I swear on my tail and to every god and goddess that if I _do_ find you dead, I won’t continue to live in a world without you. So I suggest that you ask your crystal to heal you enough to keep you alive until I reach you.”

 _Serenity does not wish it. She wishes to sleep,_ the ginzuishou chimed in sadly.

“And I wish for her to live,” Trunks ground out. “You can’t do both?”

_That is Serenity’s decision._

Shutting her eyes as she pulled Stranger down to her and buried her face in the crook of his neck, the Lunarian trembled in fear at the idea that he might not be able to find her, despite the mark and the strange, new feeling of someone else’s mind pressing against and tangling with hers. “Promise me, Stranger… promise me that you’ll find me. Please… please don’t make me suffer anymore. I hurt so badly and I just want it to be over… but I love you. I trust you… so I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

“Silver crystal, if you can keep her asleep no matter what to spare her anymore suffering, _and_ you can heal her at the same time, do it. And flare your power brightly so I can find her quickly, just in case the mating bond doesn’t work outside of the dream, or is still too new to be effective. If you can do that, I can be there in under an hour.”

“Really?” Usagi asked, hesitant to allow the small flame of hope inside of her to burn any brighter, paranoid and terrified that she’d wake somehow to more torture, or that An had erected spells to keep anyone out… or even more horrifying, that she’d erected spells to make Usagi invisible to anyone trying to help her. “You… you think that you can actually get to me in less than an hour?”

“Yes. If I have a clear means of tracking you, I won’t have a single problem finding you. Hopefully, the halfbond will translate over outside of this dreamscape. Even if it only does a little bit, that’ll be more than enough to track you easily. I won’t have to rely on the ginzuishou on the off-chance that An’ll come back to cast another binding spell over it,” he finished confidently. “I _will_ come for you, Moon. I swear it on everything I could possibly swear on.”

“I trust you,” Usagi whispered against his lips before kissing him gently. “Just please, Stranger… _hurry_.”

“Oh, I will, make no mistake about it,” he promised yet again before sealing it with one last kiss, frowning when he finally broke away, reluctant to leave her. _She won’t die,_ he reminded himself. _I’ll see her in less than an hour, just like I promised. **She. Won’t. Die.**_ “Ok, sweetheart… I’ll see you in an hour. Ginzuishou? Can you wake me up, now?”

_Yes._

So sooner had it replied, Trunks felt himself being tugged backwards, away from his mate, who was hanging onto his hand, clearly reluctant for him to leave as well. “I love you, Moon,” he said before letting go of the fingers clutching his.

“I love you, Stranger.” That was the last thing he heard, echoing in his mind as he woke from the dreamscape.

Little did either of them know, but Trunks would not only be there in less than an hour... he'd be bringing Hell itself with him.


	3. Chapter 3

                “Good, you’re awake,” Vegeta grunted quietly when Trunks opened his eyes. “Get up, take a piss, and get ready to fight, boy.”

                “Father…?” Trunks asked groggily, turning his head to find his mother sound asleep in her favorite chair. A quick scan of the room showed that Bra was also out cold, sleeping on the couch… and that it was extremely dark outside. It had still been light when they’d eaten dinner and even when he’d passed out on the couch, but now his internal clock was telling him that it was something like five or six in the morning. “How long was I asleep?” He asked in alarm, bolting upright to look around for a clock.

                “Nearly twelve hours,” Vegeta replied. “I would’ve woken you sooner, but your mother informed me that you were talking to your woman in your sleep. I didn’t want to wake you up if she was trying to give you vital information about her location or any injuries she might have sustained.” He left it at that, choosing not to inform his son that after he’d arrived, he’d heard quite a bit of purring, growling, and groaning from the demi-Saiyan as well—heh, he’d save it for the chance to troll him later, when Trunks wasn’t worried about his mate, who may or may not be gravely wounded. At least Bulma and Bra had been asleep during _that_ part of Trunks’s conversation with his mate. Knowing Bra, she would’ve taped it on her phone to use as blackmail.

                “She did tell me that, actually,” Trunks replied as he stood from the couch and hurried into the bathroom to relieve himself, then bolted upstairs, ascending to Super Saiyan as he dressed and grabbed his sword and a bag of senzu beans. “Come on, we need to hurry. I marked her in the dreamscape, but I don’t know how long it’ll work… or even if it’ll work at all,” he informed Vegeta as he strode past him quickly once he’d returned downstairs. “I can feel a flicker of her mind in the back of mine… I think.”

                “Close your eyes and focus on her and only her,” Vegeta instructed once they were outside the house. “Or focus on the crystal. I tried to find it a few times, but I had trouble—“

                “Got her!” Trunks exclaimed, rocketing into the air before his father could finish, powering up to level two to accelerate even further.

                At Super Saiyan Blue, Vegeta had no problem keeping up with his son, and he extended his hand to him in midair. “I met with Mercury while you were sleeping, and she got the Senshi up to speed. Mars let me into Moon’s apartment so I could get her communicator and her transforming-thing. Here, take them.”

                Trunks shoved them in his pocket as he ground his teeth in anger towards Sailor Moon’s guardians, only to shove it down for the moment; right then, he needed every ounce of his concentration to focus on the weak beacon he felt and saw in his mind’s eye, drawing him to his mate.

The silver crystal wasn’t flaring its power for whatever reason, so Trunks thanked the gods that the mating bond had worked, even if it was only a little. Without it, there would’ve been no hope of tracking her, and he would’ve scoured every mile of the sewers of the city just to find her.

“I was just as angry with them for not finding her,” Vegeta told him as he watched his son’s face mirror his own familiar expression of fury. “They _did_ look for her, and they continued to do so, but like you, they had no way to track her without the silver crystal as a beacon. Whoever these enemies are that kidnapped her, they’ve done their homework on how to keep the Senshi at bay. Mars has been trying to track _you_ down since the very first day, in hopes that you’d have some means of finding Sailor Moon that they don’t. And for the record, Mercury and Mars were haggard from lack of sleep. Mercury said that none of them have been sleeping well since Moon disappeared… her mate was deeply worried about that, too,” Vegeta added thoughtfully, “almost as if it was _more_ than just worry that was keeping her awake.”

“Wait… how did you know where to find Sailor Mercury?” Trunks asked as he realized that his father had not only tracked down a Senshi in no time at all, but had apparently earned her trust enough to be introduced to the others and given Sailor Moon’s effects for safe-keeping.

“Eh… it’s complicated,” Vegeta answered after several moments of considering the question, a pang of guilt flooding him just as quickly as he dismissed it. Yes, a whole week of Moon being tortured could have been avoided if Mercury had known that Vegeta was Stranger’s father, and Vegeta had known for sure that Ami was Sailor Mercury… but Vegeta was hardly psychic. He would have asked about her identity or told her or her fiancé that Stranger was his son if he’d thought for even a moment that something like this might have happened. Instead, he hadn’t really cared one way or the other if Ami was Mercury. He’d only suspected it. And he’d never divulged his son’s identity out of respect for his son’s desire to remain nameless to the Senshi. “Let’s just say that her mate and I go _way_ back. Don’t mention that to your woman, either,” he added tersely, “the last thing I need is for either of those two to call me up and cuss me out. Mercury told me she doesn’t want anyone to know that she’s engaged.”

“Why?” Trunks asked in confusion. Shouldn’t that be something to celebrate?

“Eh… again, it’s complicated… but mostly, it’s because Mercury doesn’t want the others hounding her for information and poking their noses into her love life. She’ll tell them when she feels like it.”

“Down there,” Trunks said as he suddenly screeched to a halt over the city, turning slowly in midair to be sure that he had the right spot before rocketing to the ground and landing beside a manhole that was about a hundred yards from where the bond had pulled him to. He could feel Moon’s ki now, too, and the half-Saiyan shivered as he sensed how weak she was, how she was flirting with death, even as the silver crystal suddenly blinked into existence in his and Vegeta’s third eyes, shining so brightly that it was impossible to tune out.

“I’ll have no problem finding her, now,” Vegeta remarked. “Just in case we get separated down there.”

“No,” Trunks replied quickly, his voice firm. “No, Father. But… thank you. I saw what they did to her,” he added softly, his voice laced with anger and heartbreak for what she’d endured. “Moon wouldn’t want anyone to see her like she is right now. She only showed me so that I would know what to expect.”

“It’s that bad?” Vegeta asked, his voice calm and even, despite the fact that his fury was rising on his son’s behalf.

“Dad… I… I don’t even want you to call Mom in to help me clean her up,” Trunks whispered sadly. “Or the Senshi. Trust me… it’s really that bad. The less that see her like she is… the better. I know Moon well, and she wouldn’t be able to handle the pity in everyone’s eyes whenever the subject of her captivity came up.”

“Fair enough. However, I’m coming with you anyway. Trunks,” Vegeta added when his son’s green eyes flashed angrily, “I can keep secrets better than anyone you know. You know this. The girl will never know that I helped… and after what I endured for seventeen years with Frieza, the last thing any prisoner of war will see in _my_ eyes is pity.”

His father had a point, and like it always did whenever his captivity was the topic of conversation, Vegeta’s face had contorted into an expression of terror for a split second. “Alright,” Trunks conceded after a brief hesitation, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as he bent to remove the manhole cover closest to where the silver crystal was pulsing brightly and his mate’s life force was flickering, dangerously close to winking out altogether. “We need to hurry.”

Vegeta simply nodded at that and followed his son down into the dark, stinking sewer, landing lightly on the concrete walkway alongside the flowing sewage. “For once in my life, I think I’d trade places with a human,” he choked out.

“Heh, makes me glad I’m only half-Saiyan,” Trunks remarked knowingly. The smell of raw sewage was so overpowering down there that he felt like vomiting; he could only imagine how bad off his father was, since he had the nose of a full-blooded Saiyan!

“Oh, fuck _you_ , boy,” Vegeta huffed as he tried to keep his breaths shallow. “I hope you’re having the same problem I am.”

“What’s that? Trying not to puke?”

“No, it’s deciding whether to breathe through my nose or my mouth,” Vegeta snapped as Trunks unsheathed his sword and began to fly at the speed of a jogging human. “I can choose to either smell it or taste it, and both prospects are equally vulgar.”

Just as Vegeta had finished his sentence and they’d reached a sharp curve, something leapt out of the flowing filth, splashing them in it as it charged. Thankfully for both of them, Trunks had been ready for such an attack, and quickly dispatched the disgusting thing before it could even speak. “Well… now we’re wearing it,” he sighed.

“Don’t fucking remind me,” Vegeta huffed as he kicked the dead monster in his anger over getting splattered in waste.

“We’ll get showers later. Come on, we need to hurry,” Trunks urged his father as he shivered in terror in reaction to Moon’s ki blinking out completely. He held his breath for the span of seven seconds, letting it out in a rush of relief when her ki flickered into being once more, and when the silver crystal flared and Trunks heard someone’s cry echoing in the tunnels, he poured power into his speed, completely disregarding his father’s urgings for him to be careful when he sensed another monster dead ahead.

That monster fell after it had called out “Master Ail!,” and the half-Saiyan prince heard a reply from the male voice that he’d heard echoing around him moments before, followed by a woman’s angry shout.

“I’ll put the spell in place again if you don’t swear to me that—“

“Put that spell up again, An, and she’ll die! And if she dies, _we_ die! We agreed to wait a day for it to heal her! Now shut up, I thought I heard one of the Cardians yell for me!”

“And it’s only _just_ started!” An protested hotly. “The little bitch was about to die when it finally decided to help her!”

“So what!? You agreed to a full day! Now shut the fuck up, already!”

“Gods, yes. _Please_ shut the fuck up,” Vegeta muttered as he and Trunks stopped only ten yards from the pair, flaring his ki to light the room off to the side of the main drainage area. “Your voice is shrill… and that’s putting it kindly. Boy, you want me to handle these two?” He directed at his son, who was so furious that he could only grind his teeth and stare at them with murder in his eyes… at least, however, until he focused on Sailor Moon’s broken, dying body and the healing light that emanated from her.

As much as he wanted to do the honors and kill the two that had kidnapped and tortured his mate, Trunks knew that Moon was his first priority—she was simply too close to death for him to waste any time… not even to kill An and Ail as brutally as he possibly could. “Make them suffer,” he whispered to his father before sheathing his sword and striding over to Sailor Moon’s mortal form, allowing himself to feel a shred of satisfaction when Ail attempted to strike him, only to be burned horribly by the ki shield that Trunks had erected just in time.

“Take her to the cabin,” Vegeta told his son, grimacing at the state of Sailor Moon’s bleeding, skinless back and her black and blue face and chest when Trunks gingerly lifted her into his arms. “I’ll be about five minutes behind you.”

“No,” Trunks growled, “five minutes of pain isn’t even _close_ to what they deserve!”

“No, it’s not,” Vegeta agreed solemnly, “but your mate’s health is even more important than revenge… and you’re going to need my help to wash her without making her back even worse. Go to the cabin,” he ordered once more when Trunks reluctantly nodded in submission to his father’s will. “I swear that I won’t kill them until they beg me to.”

Even then, Trunks knew that that would _still_ only take Vegeta five minutes or less to accomplish, but he let go of his fury in favor of saving the woman he loved, shielding both of them from any falling debris when he blasted a hole in the ceiling of the sewer with a ball of blue ki. “Five minutes,” he reminded his father before shooting into the sky and towards the north, drawing on as much of his power as possible to fly even faster once he’s broken the sound barrier, shielding the precious bundle in his arms from the force of the wind.

####################################################

In the impenetrable darkness of the cold, long night on the dark side of the moon, a hooded figure sighed at the scene playing out in a gazing ball floating before him, drumming his fingers on his knee as he watched the Saiyan with blue, upswept hair tearing a limb from An, only to smack Ail upside the head with it. “Perhaps I should have dealt with those two more directly,” the figure murmured as it thought of how it had weakened the Tree of Life, how it had been correct in its prediction of how An and Ail would handle themselves… and how their jealousies would result in the attempted murder of The Light of Hope.

“I should have known better than to send those incompetent children to do a man’s job,” the figure croaked, its voice low, dark and dusty. And old… that voice was older than the bleakness of space, and just as icy and devoid of life.

That voice was Death itself, and as its owner waved a hand over the scene of Ail begging for death without teeth or a tongue, looking up at the crown prince with sightless, bloody eye sockets, it shifted to a vision of the golden-haired half-Saiyan landing in front of a roughly built cabin nestled in the depths of a forest. “Yes… this is a man’s job. Lucky for me, I have plenty of those at my disposal. Diamond… Sapphire… Rubeus. You are summoned. Return to me with ten-fold the strength you had so long ago.”

It would deal directly with its pawns this time, as it should have to begin with. Because now there were Saiyans involved, and taking the ginzuishou—taking what was rightfully his—would be far more difficult than it would have been if it had done things right the first time. “Yes… the moment my strength has returned after my time in the Cauldron, I shall attend to this matter myself. But for now, let us not take any unnecessary chances. The three of you shall monitor the Saiyans and report back to me as much as you know about them. Do not engage them at all, not unless you’re absolutely sure that you can kill without being seen or detected by the others.”

“Yes, my lord,” Diamond replied, bowing low. “May I ask how we will deal with the Senshi?”

“You won’t,” the dark figure replied flatly and coldly. “I have other, much more competent servants dealing with them, and if you interfere with their plans, Diamond, I’ll make your last death seem pleasant in comparison to what I’ll do to you. You don’t go near the Senshi, understand?”

“Yes… of course, my lord.”

There was hesitation in Diamond’s voice, but their master ignored it and nodded before waving a hand towards the door. “You’re dismissed. Get to work.”

########################################################

Once Trunks had kicked the door of the cabin closed with his foot, he didn’t bother trying to find any light switches, choosing to navigate the place in the dark, finding the bathroom easily and cutting the bath water on with his tail. “I hope you’re ok with this, Moon,” he whispered as he sat her upright in the tub, using his tail to keep her from slumping over while he plugged the tub and washed his hands.

He extracted the bag of senzu beans from his pants pocket, thanking the gods that they were in a waterproof bag, washing it thoroughly before opening it just in case anything from the sewer had gotten on it. “Ok, silver crystal,” Trunks murmured as he climbed into the tub with his unconscious mate, “I need you to wake her up enough to eat these.”

 _There will be pain,_ the crystal warned him.

“I know, but these will help heal her,” Trunks reminded the ginzuishou, “and I can’t very well get her to swallow unless she’s awake.”

No sooner had he spoken, crystal blue eyes cracked open in the dark, and when Trunks created a dim light with his ki so that she could see him, he wasn’t surprised to find tears welling up in her eyes. “Hey, sweetheart,” Trunks breathed. “I brought senzu beans, like I promised. You think you can eat two of them for me?”

“Yes,” Usagi rasped, her voice barely heard over the running water, even by half-Saiyan ears. “Stranger… must still be dreaming…”

“No, Moon, you’re not dreaming,” Trunks assured her as he placed one of the senzu beans in her mouth. “Chew and swallow,” he urged her when she only pocketed it in her cheek and stared at him with pain-filled glassy eyes. It took a while, but she eventually did as she was told, her chewing agonizingly slow, even when common sense told him that she probably hadn’t had anything to drink in a long time and he left the tub to get a glass of juice from the kitchen, tracking all the way there and back from the bathwater.

Holding the glass to her cracked lips, Trunks wasn’t surprised to watch her try to drink it all at once, but he withheld the rest as he watched the bruises on her face and chest fade a bit, and when it seemed like the first bean had finished working its magic, he pushed the second one into her mouth and offered the glass again. “Good, Moon. Very good,” he encouraged her. “Now, let’s get these clothes off. Come here, beautiful.”

Even if Usagi had possessed the will to fight, she wouldn’t have; she merely sagged into her savior’s arms, emitting a weak sob that told her that her voice box was still damaged, trying her best to find the strength to stay upright—even with her broken arms and legs still healing—without forcing Stranger to take all of her weight, especially when he wisely began to tug at her shredded clothes from behind… so that when he ripped them off, the remaining cloth wouldn’t rub against or put any pressure on her raw back.

“Moon… do you want to go back to sleep? It’s ok if you do,” Trunks assured her. “I’d rather spare you any more pain, and... it’s going to hurt when I wash your back. It’s going to hurt _a lot_.”

“Senzu,” she rasped in his ear.

“Kay,” Trunks replied gently, snatching up the bag he’d left sitting on the edge of the tub and promptly putting a third bean in her mouth for her. “Do you need more juice?”

Usagi merely shook her head, chewing the bean and swallowing, and she immediately felt a bit better as a result. A couple more of those things would have her healed completely, but she knew she couldn’t handle a fourth, let alone two or three more—she was too nauseous from the extensive, brutal physical trauma she’d endured. “Sleep,” she whispered, noting that her voice sounded a bit stronger and that her throat hurt a little less than before. “You sure?”

“Positive. Go ahead and sleep, I’ll take care of you. I promise, angel.”

Usagi nodded at that and told the crystal to knock her out until she needed to pee, but before sleep overcame her senses, she pressed her lips to Stranger’s cheek. “Stranger,” she breathed, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Moon,” he replied tenderly as he dipped in for a brief, chaste kiss. “Now sleep.”

“Good to know that my timing was perfect for once,” Vegeta remarked in the doorway after Usagi’s eyes had slipped shut, stripping off his clothes—which were covered liberally in a mixture of filth from the sewers and blood splatters and gore from both Ail and An. “I’m going to go out back and make use of the hose,” Trunks’s father informed him, “and then I’ll help hold her up so that we can properly wash her… especially her back.”

Trunks merely nodded his thanks as he used his tail to keep Moon upright, noting that the water in the tub was already filthy. With a sigh he unplugged it and cut on the shower, snagging a clean washcloth from a drawer just within his reach.

He started with her face, and she was so caked in filth that he’d only just finished revealing all of it when his father returned, having taken his time to gently clean the mean-looking, healing gash on her cheek. “Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” the older Saiyan remarked as he knelt beside his son and took the washcloth from him. “You hold her, I’ll wash. Nappa and I had to do this for Raditz once when he went off on a two-week bender,” he explained with a roll of his eyes at the memory. “Giant seven-foot douchebag… I did the washing while Nappa did the holding—I was only fifteen and too short to hold Raditz up in the tub.”

While Trunks wanted to comment that his father would probably still be too short to help hold up a seven-foot-tall Saiyan, he bit his tongue and simply climbed in the tub with the love of his life, closing his eyes against the spray of the shower when Vegeta instructed him to get behind her and tossed him another clean cloth to help where he could.

They found a good rhythm after a minute of working together, with Trunks using his arms to hold Sailor Moon against him and his tail to use the cloth, and Vegeta working with both hands and tail to simply wash her, giving Trunks some more soap on occasion to refresh his cloth. With both of them combined, she was clean in an hour, including her hair and her back, both of which took equally long to thoroughly clean.

“Alright,” Vegeta grunted once they’d finished, “give her here. I’ll get her settled into your bed while you shower.”

Trunks hesitated at that, but his protest stopped short in his mouth when he looked down to find himself still pretty filthy, his clothes sopping wet with both water and a little remaining sewage. “I’ll clean up the bathroom and the hall when I’m done,” he agreed as he deftly caught another fresh cloth from his father without even looking up from the act of stripping off his tank top and pants. “And Father… thank you,” he added gratefully. “I mean it.”

Vegeta nodded at that, easily hefting the clean, naked princess against his bare chest, flaring his ki to dry her. “You’d do it for me,” he replied as he left the bathroom, intent on avoiding any more sappy, heartfelt thank yous, in a hurry to get the naked woman that _wasn’t_ his mate out of his arms. He’d scrub again before heading home; it was bizarre and it felt awkward to have the scent of a woman on him that wasn’t Bulma’s… especially a woman that was covered in his son’s scent. His son’s strong, extremely territorial scent, at that. That scent was a warning to any other Saiyan male that could smell it— and it said loud and clear, “this is my mate, touch her and I’ll fucking kill you.” Thankfully, Vegeta knew that he was exempt from that warning. Not only was he family, but he didn’t want a gods damned thing to do with any woman other than his Bulma. Vegeta was a male that was labelled safe… and probably the only one that was. “There,” he stated as he tucked her in, “my good deed for the century’s done and over with.”

“Not quite!” Trunks shouted from the shower.

“Oh, come on!” Vegeta snapped, “what else could you possibly want from me in one night!?”

“…clothes?” Trunks asked as he poked his head around the curtain. “Dad… if any of this is annoying you, you can go. Seriously, you’ve done enough. I wouldn’t have even asked for clothes if I knew I was getting on your nerves.”

“You’re not,” the prince ground out as he stomped his way to the bathroom door, “it’s just… your woman… she… and Bulma…”

“Oh,” Trunks realized aloud, catching a whiff of his father’s scent and taking note of the bright red blush on Vegeta’s face. “Oooooh. Oh, shit! Father, I am _so_ sorry, hang on! I’m almost done!”

Sputtering aloud, the prince nodded as he leaned against the doorjamb and waited his turn, and once a naked Trunks came out from behind the curtain, Vegeta gladly took his place to scrub a second time from head to toe, thanking the gods for the gigantic water heater in the little rundown cabin. By the time he emerged, he found his son sitting on the edge of his bed, gazing down at the sleeping blonde, his eyes misty and full of guilt. “Not your fault, boy. I learned a long time ago that there’s no point in blaming yourself for shit that you didn’t have control over.”

“But I did,” Trunks replied thickly. “I _did_.”

“No… you didn’t. Because if you did, it wouldn’t have happened,” Vegeta insisted with a brief, awkward squeeze to his son’s bare shoulder.

“I felt like something was wrong for days,” Trunks sobbed, wiping at his eyes. “And I ignored it. I ignored it! And now she’s—she…” In his right mind, the half-breed would have never expected the strong arms that surrounded him— let alone leaned into them—but Trunks did lean into them, weeping into his father’s chest as he thought of the extensive injuries that they’d uncovered as they’d washed Sailor Moon of the layers of sewage she’d been coated in for a week.

“Shh… Trunks… it’ll be alright,” Vegeta finally murmured after his son’s weeping had lost its scary, hysterical edge and had tapered off into the occasional sob. “You found her. You saved her. That’s what’s important. And the people that did that to her are dead. Trust me,” he added with a humorless chuckle, “they both begged for death a dozen times before I finally gave it to them.”

Two full minutes passed before Trunks finally replied, and when he did, he managed a weak smile for his father. “Thank you, Dad.”

“You’re welcome. Now… get off of me. Before I decide that I need to punch you in the face to feel normal again.” When Trunks withdrew a little too quickly, Vegeta sighed and patted his back to emphasize that he was there if his son needed more comfort, well aware that Trunks knew how little experience his father had in comforting anyone or anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to… it was just that he didn’t know _how_ to. Most of the time, anyway. “I’ll return with clothes for the both of you,” he said as his ki flared in a burst of power that turned his hair blue and encased him in his typical shimmering aura. “If she wakes, give her a few more of these.” Using his tail, he snatched up the bag of extra senzu that he’d brought along and deposited it in his son’s open hand. “And make sure she drinks as much as possible; she’s probably more dehydrated than even I was on missions for Frieza.”

“Yes, Father. Thank you,” Trunks added, his gratitude shining in his eyes as he looked up from Moon’s sleeping form.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re welcome,” Vegeta grunted. “You need another hug?”

“Heh… no, Father. But thanks,” Trunks replied, managing a ghost of a smile for his old man as he remembered another hug, in another time and another place, where he’d been the embarrassed party and his father had been the one with tears in his eyes. “I’m good. I think you’ve filled your quota of once-a-decade hugs for the next ten years.”

“Phhhht…” Trying his best not to laugh as he understood his son’s meaning _perfectly_ , Vegeta grinned, nodded, and strode out of the cabin before rocketing towards home, leaving the conversation on a high note.

Before he returned, he’d also make a point to call Ami’s mate before he contacted the prince first… all things considered, the giant jackass was justifiably worried about Mercury, and Vegeta was in a surprisingly benevolent mood for once in his life. Maybe some good news would be enough for the half-bonded pair to sleep through the new day.

 


	4. Chapter 4

                “Yes… yes. Yes... yes,” Vegeta drawled out, each ‘yes’ growing more impatient than the last as he mused silently about how this totally made him even with the asshole he’d killed in contempt over twenty years ago. “Yes… goddamnit, Nappa, _I said **yes**_!” He snapped out.

                _Even. We are totally, **completely** fucking **even**!_

“Nappa, why don’t you go to bed,” a soft, weary voice said off-screen. “I’ll talk to Vegeta. He sounds pretty tired, too.”

                “I’m not tired,” the prince huffed when the blue-haired princess of Mercury popped onto his screen. “I’m just tired of dealing with him.”

                “He was worried about both of you,” Ami informed him gently. “Do you know how hard it’s been for him to not have a lot of contact with you? Even after you killed him so coldly?”

                “I know, I _know_. You reminded me of that four or five times when I came over at sundown,” he replied tersely. When would Nappa finally understand that Vegeta didn’t need his protection anymore!? For fuck’s sake, Vegeta was a million times stronger than him and so was Trunks!

Even if Nappa _had_ achieved Super Saiyan fifteen years ago and Super Saiyan Two ten years ago and currently straddled the threshold of Super Saiyan Three, Vegeta still outstripped his power level in spades... even if the method of Nappa’s ascension _was_ quite impressive. When one considered the fact that he did it all on his own in daily, solitary training, solely because he wanted to better himself and be worthy of his princes and be able to protect them—and then, more recently, because Nappa wanted to be worthy of the woman he’d felt the pull for and be able to protect her—one had to give the gargantuan former general a tip of the hat and a pat on the back for his loyalty, dedication, and persistence.

Yes, that was _definitely_ a very Nappa-like quality. Persistence would have Nappa’s picture next to it in the dictionary on Vegeta-sei if the planet still existed, because that man, if he was _anything_ and absolutely nothing _but_ one thing… he was _definitely_ persistent. Especially when it came to offering Vegeta his services Every. Fucking. Time. He. Saw. Him. Goddamnit, _he didn’t need a bodyguard_! Nappa was his own man now if he wanted, so why in the gods’ names did he always stress that he was at Vegeta’s service if he was needed? “Look, Blue. I don’t need Nappa motherhenning me anymore! I’m a grown-ass man!”

                “That’s pretty cold after he served you for decades only for you to kill him,” Ami reminded him icily. “After he **_raised_** you and Raditz all by himself, as his own sons.”

                “It wasn’t meant as an insult, woman! It was meant as a _kindness_!” Vegeta shouted at her, his patience at its limit. “I don’t need a fucking bodyguard anymore and that’s that! Nappa’s free! Free to do whatever he wants, free to be his own man! I’d thought he’d be _happy_!”

                Accustomed to loud, frustrated outbursts from her mate and fellow royalty, Ami took it well, her mouth a stern, patient line as he ranted at her and she waited to respond to what she’d thought about not only all night, but for most of the three years she’d known Nappa and all of the two and a half years during which they’d shared a half-bond. “No, Vegeta. You _don’t_ need him… but if you ever thought for a moment about someone besides yourself, you would have realized _years_ ago that _he_ needs _you_.” Watching the prince’s mouth go slack and listening to his wordless sputter, Ami decided that that was a good place to end the conversation. It would do Vegeta some good to stew over her words for a day or two. “Having a purpose made him happy. Vegeta… _you_ made him happy. Just as our princess makes her guardians happy. I’m going to bed now,” she sighed. “Call me no matter what. If you think it might be important, it _is_ important. Bye.”

                Staring at the blank screen, Vegeta silently sputtered, but it would have surprised Ami to know that the sputtering was directed more towards himself than at anyone. Apparently, all these years, he’d thought that Nappa just didn’t get it… when it turned out that Vegeta was the one that didn’t get it. “Why didn’t he just _say_ that?” The prince wondered aloud, awash in guilt as he thought of how coldly he’d taken Nappa’s life.

                Yes, it had been a mercy killing. Nappa might have recovered from his wounds with the aid of a medtank, but without one, the general would’ve likely been crippled for life once he’d finally healed. It had been a mercy killing, but… Vegeta had done it coldly. Very coldly. Cruelly, even. And he’d done it with every ounce of contempt he’d had inside of him for weakness.

                “Damn it,” he muttered. He was going to have to make it right between them. He was in debt to Nappa for decades of faithful service, and Vegeta had never been the type of man to let a debt remain unpaid. To be honest, part of that debt? It could never be repaid. Ever. Because Ami was right. Nappa had raised him, had done his best with himself and Raditz, during a very difficult time for all them, when they’d believed themselves the only remaining Saiyans in the universe. Not only that, but as he and Raditz had grown into teenagers, Nappa had somehow managed to instill hope in them when they’d voiced their despair and had reluctantly admitted the fact that they might want to mate one day. Only… there was no one to mate with. No female Saiyans were left. Yet Nappa had convinced them that the gods had a plan, and that Dra and Cha wouldn’t allow warriors such as themselves to remain unmated for all of their lives.

Nappa had been their father, their friend, and their protector… and Vegeta had cast him aside as if he’d been worthless, as if he’d meant nothing to him. He could blame Frieza’s teachings and Frieza's torture for it all, but Vegeta knew in his heart that much of his selfish, bitter contempt all those years ago… it was mostly on him, as well as his superiority complex. Frieza’s influence had affected him, yes, but he’d acted mostly on his own emotions—or rather, an inability to deal with them constructively—when he’d killed Nappa. Not because of Frieza’s cruel manipulations throughout the years. “I’m sorry,” he sighed aloud, despite the fact that Nappa couldn’t hear him. The next time he saw him, he would say it to his face. _“Nappa… nu’or m’eh. Buh’tir, nu’or m’eh. Ih ee’ko.”_

                Vegeta would make it right. He wasn’t exactly sure how since a simply apology wouldn’t cut it—Nappa would immediately accept the apology and forgive him for everything, the prince knew that, but his actions definitely warranted much, much more than just a verbal mea culpa. He’d figure it out as soon as the more pressing need to make sure his son’s mate recovered was taken care of. Speaking of which, he needed to get moving. The girl would need some clothes once she healed… okay, maybe she wouldn’t need them _immediately_ after she’d healed, he realized with a half-smile. Yes, he could and would take his time on the issue of getting her some clothing. It would be better to wait, to allow his son some time to start washing away the horrors of her captivity and torture with a few long, lazy days of lovemaking.

                Yes… he’d wait. After all, the younger Saiyan prince and the Lunarian princess deserved to have some time to confess their feelings for each other, and then even more to act on them. A ‘honeymoon,’ as Bulma had called it when they’d married in the human custom. Yes, after everything that moon girl had endured, she deserved a honeymoon, a respite without anyone but his son around, some time to heal inside as well as out.

                With a decisive nod, Vegeta decided then to finally go to bed after nearly two days without any sleep. He would leave his cell phone on—something he rarely did—and beneath his pillow—an even rarer show of concern and consideration for family… but not for Trunks. No, that was just in case the moon girl needed something or was in trouble. The prince knew all too well the after-effects of torture on the psyche, and while his son would share a psychic bond with the girl, Trunks would _not_ be mentally equipped to deal with what Sailor Moon would almost certainly endure after such brutal torture.

                So after he’d stripped and climbed into bed silently—so as not to wake his Bulma—Vegeta made sure his phone was on and under his pillow, and it would be for quite some time to come, a rare display of compassion for someone besides his mate. The girl was family, after all. Or at least, she would be; really, _really_ soon.

#############################################

                So worried about Sailor Moon, Trunks didn’t sleep after sliding into bed with her, his cheeks hot in reaction to the way her naked flesh felt tucked against his own, his cock stirring to life despite the fact that there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d try to put the moves on her before she was anything less than 100% healed. Even so, it was a year-long fantasy finally made real, and if he hadn’t been terrified of her waking in a panic—or worse, not waking at all—he would have snuggled into her tightly and purred ecstatically before dropping off into the deepest, most peaceful sleep of his life.

                That wasn’t the case, though, since he was afraid of Moon waking in sheer, confused terror, of not knowing where she was, of rebreaking the fragile, knitting bones in her arms and legs if she tried to get out of the bed without his help. So Trunks simply laid there and watched her sleep, his fingers idly, lightly tracing her face, her arms, the healing, torn, scarred flesh of her back as hour after hour ticked by and he visibly witnessed firsthand the healing powers of the ginzuishou.

                “I love you,” he whispered when she stirred just before dawn, lying down against her with his head on the pillow next to hers so that his face would be the very first thing she’d lay her eyes upon when she opened them. “Hey, Moon,” he murmured when she cracked open those crystal blues, his lips twitching up in a smirk when she blinked at him in the momentary confusion that always came with waking in a strange bed.

                That confusion was followed with a flicker of terror, then more confusion, and then finally, recognition and understanding as she relaxed muscles that had instinctively tightened as she’d wondered where Ail and An were. “Hey, Stranger,” she whispered, wincing at the pain in her throat, only to realize that it was significantly better than before as she noticed tears forming in his eyes. “You ok?”

                The sound of her concerned voice released a tension within him that Trunks hadn’t been aware of carrying, and his voice cracked when he replied, his fingers caressing the scarred cheek that had partially healed in the night. “I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up.”

                “I did,” Usagi breathed, trying to mask the pain in her expression when she moved a healing arm to stroke his face, closing the gap between their mouths to press hers to his tenderly, blushing hotly in reaction to the thought that this was finally their first real, in person kiss. “I woke because of you, Stranger. Thank you.” A short silence passed between them during which Trunks grasped the hand cupping his cheek, nuzzling his face into it and sighing in contentment, but after a couple minutes, Usagi could no longer take it. “Stranger?” She asked hesitantly.

                “Mmm?” Trunks all but purred in response, trying his best to banish fantasies of making love to her as the sun rose.

                “I, um… I really, really… um… need to…”

                Blinking at the discomfort in her raspy voice, Trunks leaned up to look at her and found her face red, her expression one that reminded him of Bra when she’d been little and—“Oh. Oh gods, how thoughtless of me. Moon, you could’ve said something right away,” he chuckled. “Though, to be fair, I should’ve offered,” he corrected himself as he rose up on his knees and grasped the hand that had been cupping his cheek as she carefully drew the covers down, keeping a keen eye on the flesh of her back, making a mental note to thank his father later on for the thoughtfulness he’d shown in placing Moon on her stomach with a light ki shield across the weeping mess that remained… even after two senzu beans. “Arms around my neck, sweetheart,” he ordered as he bent down, lifting her easily into his arms with one carefully placed across the shield and another beneath her knees, responding to her blush and her roaming eyes with a lopsided grin and a blush of his own. “Well, I can hardly help it that my clothes were ruined,” he teased as he moved slowly out the door and down the hall. “And I sure as hell wasn’t going to try to sleep somewhere else when I was worried sick about you. I guess I could move to my father’s room now that you’re awake, though,” he hedged as he turned sideways through the bathroom door and carefully sat her down on the toilet before turning his back to give her some privacy.

                “No, Stranger,” Usa said as she started to make water, her face turning even redder due to the fact that he hadn’t left the room. At least he’d turned away, though… and she had to admit that if the roles were reversed, she wouldn’t have left him alone for even a second, no matter what state of undress he was in, even if he was peeing. “Please… don’t sleep in another room,” she continued once she’d wiped and flushed the toilet, peering up at him in the dark with eyes that were accustomed to no light at all. “I… I don’t like the thought of being alone,” Usa admitted with a shiver as he met her eyes. “I’m _terrified_ of being alone.”

                “Never leave you ever again,” Trunks murmured as he bent down and kissed her tenderly. “Swear it.”

                “While that’s touching and everything,” a low, gravely male voice said from outside the door—a voice that Trunks would never mistake for anyone else’s—I’m pretty sure your woman’s back hurts like a bitch, son.”

                “Oh. Father? I thought you weren’t coming back until later,” Trunks muttered in confusion as he stood and poked his head out the door to find Vegeta blonde, his face covered by a bandanna that concealed his mouth and nose. “What’s with the—oh,” he chuckled when the prince pointed at his son’s hair and quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah. Forgot. Thanks, Dad. Though, to be fair… if Moon wants to know who I am…” Trunks shrugged at that before going back into the bathroom, holding his arms out to her. “Hm… guess we should save that shock for later on though, what do you think, beautiful?”

                “Why?” She wondered aloud. “Would it really be a shock?”

                “Could be,” Vegeta admitted when Trunks stepped out into the dark hallway with his soon-to-be-mate in his arms. “We’re kind of famous, which is why his mother didn’t come herself for this trip. Instead, she gave me instructions for the ointment she sent,” he explained, keeping his eyes averted towards the ceiling—just as he had the whole way down the hall—when Trunks delicately maneuvered her into the bed and onto her stomach. “Why?” He asked, fixing his eyes on hers once she was covered up, “does it matter who my son is?”

The warm smile that started in her eyes and travelled to her mouth had an unexpected effect on Vegeta, and when she giggled hoarsely and shook her head, he found himself giving her a rare, slow, half-smile in return. “Good,” he grunted, wiping the smile from his face with a slight coloring to his cheeks as soon as he realized that he was wearing one. “Wouldn’t want to have to kick your ass or anything. Now,” he added quickly, trying his best not to sound awkward as he rapidly changed the subject, “my mate said that this has to be applied in tandem with a senzu bean, with another taken between eight and twelve minutes later along with a special tea ball she sent, and if it’s all done right, it _should_ fully heal you over the course of an hour.”

                “Will—“ Rubbing her throat as she tried not to cry at the tearing pain in her larynx, Usagi couldn’t keep a hopeful smile off her face. “The scars,” she finally rasped, only for her eyes to fill with tears when Stranger’s father sighed and shook his head.

                “Too deep. Untreated for too long,” Vegeta rumbled with a note of sympathy to his voice and an extremely awkward pat to Moon’s arm when the tears in her eyes spilled over and she sniffled and wiped at them. “Look, girl… those scars…” The prince sighed and shook his head, lifting a single shoulder in an awkward shrug, unaccustomed to giving _anyone_ a reassuring pep talk and unable to find the right words to comfort his son’s mate… even though he wanted to.

He’d been where she was, and while the numerous roadmap of physical scars that were proof of his torture during his years with Frieza had never bothered him, there were many other aspects of his decade and a half of torture that had scarred him in others ways… and those were the scars that he was sometimes still ashamed of. The scars that woke him up at night in a cold sweat. The scars that he’d never spoken of to anyone except for Bulma… and even then, he’d never gone into detail, but he knew he didn’t have to. Because of the bond, Bulma knew what he’d been through, and whenever he woke from nightmares, sometimes crying, sometimes not, she never spoke of those scars, either, and only held him as she pushed love, comfort and a sense of safety through the bond—sometimes for hours—until Vegeta finally managed to doze back off into a fitful sleep.

Shaking himself from bad memories, Vegeta found the moon girl watching him with a wise, knowing look in her eyes, and when she reached out and gave his hand a brief squeeze, he felt his cheeks grow hot again and he barely kept himself from sputtering at her. Instead, he turned his head to look at his son as he pretended that the exchange between him and his new daughter had never happened. “Truh—er… **_Stranger_**. Whatever your damned name is. Go make the tea,” he ordered gruffly as he grabbed the plastic tea ball and tossed it to Trunks. “Your mother said to heat twelve ounces of water in the microwave for two minutes, then add the ball to the water and put it back in for another three. Then stir it slowly for twenty seconds and heat it for another minute. It needs to be done _exactly_ as she said or it won’t work as effectively as it could have when done correctly.”

                “Got it… and Dad? Thanks,” Trunks said softly when Vegeta lifted an eyebrow in response to the question. “Really… thank you. For everything.”

                “Yeah, yeah. Here,” Vegeta grunted as he tried his best not to feel even more awkward than he already had for the last five to ten minutes, removing the backpack on his shoulder and tossing it to his naked offspring. “Pants.”

                “Why?” Trunks asked, unable to help himself as he waggled his eyebrows, “does the sight of me running around naked make you uncomfortable? …or jealous?”

                Blue eyes wide at both of them—and fully expecting to witness an ass-whooping after the stories she’d heard about Stranger’s father and his intolerance for backtalk—Usagi’s shock actually morphed into a ghost of a smile when the older prince blushed hotly, grabbed a random object from the desk and chucked it at his son. “Vulgar brat, go put some pants on and stop disrespecting me just to try and look good in front of your woman!”

                “Feh, you’re no fun, _da’ta_ ,” Trunks snorted as he took the backpack, grinning down at the sight of the tiny, amused smile on Moon’s lips. He’d hoped to make her laugh, but after everything she’d been through, he’d definitely take that barest hint of a smile.

                “Stop sassing your father, Stranger,” Moon admonished him softly, waving him out the door. “And go get dressed, it’s disrespectful to run around naked after he’s asked you not to.” She stopped at that, silenced by a kiss to her lips, and sighed into it as she felt her cheeks heating up until she was sure that the shade of them matched Stranger’s father’s. “After your father leaves, you can take them off again… and then…? I want you to make love to me… like you promised,” she whispered shyly when he drew away, her words meant only for his ears. Thankfully, Usagi didn’t turn her head to see Vegeta’s face turn so red that it rivaled the dawn, and she didn’t remember how good Stranger’s hearing was, nor did she realize that his father’s would be just as good if not even better. If she had, she would have been mortified to know that Stranger’s father had heard every single word, as well as the breathless quality to her shy statement that had everything to do with the fact that she’d wanted Stranger for months… and nothing to do with the fact that her upper vocal chords were shredded.

                “No worries, Moon… as soon as you’re healed, I’ll keep my promise,” Trunks reassured her with a tender kiss, his chest rumbling softly in that quiet, seductive purr meant only for her. “I honestly don’t think I’ll be able to stop making love to you for days… so if you feel like you still need some rest, you’d better pray you’re not fully healed by the time the old man leaves,” he added in an attempt to make her smile again—it didn’t work that time, but that was alright, he’d keep trying his best to bring back the sunny smile that had always lit up his world—chuckling when he heard Vegeta sputter, well aware without even looking up that the crown prince was rolling his eyes at the both of them… and was probably even redder due to the subject of their hushed conversation.

                “Thought he’d never get moving,” Vegeta muttered when Trunks gave her one last kiss, a wink, and then left the room to make the tea… and to hopefully, finally put on some gods damned pants. At least, Vegeta prayed to Dra that the boy would as he sat on the edge of the bed and gripped the covers, drawing them back slowly. He’d sure hate to beat the shit out of and humiliate his son in front of the girl before they’d even mated, after all. “I’d rather he not see this,” he explained when Moon looked up at him, her eyebrows raised curiously. “It’s going to hurt. Sorry, but… there’s no getting around it.”

                “Oh,” she whispered, pausing for several heartbeats before nodding in understanding. Yes, it would be better if Stranger wasn’t present if she was going to be in pain. “It can’t possibly be as bad as the last week, so go ahead. I won’t cry out.”

                With a grunt of approval, Vegeta uncapped the tin of salve and set it aside before removing a senzu from the bag on the nightstand and offering it to her. “Good girl. Bottoms up… and for the record…” He took a deep breath and sighed, looking down at her sympathetically, wishing that her kind were healed by a single senzu the same way his were. “…I’m sorry for what’s about to happen.”

                Once she’d chewed and swallowed, Usa shook her head. “Don’t be. Just… make it quick. That’s all I ask.”

                “I’ll do my best. Face first, girl. Turn it towards me.”

                Doing as asked without question, Usagi shut her eyes tightly as she expected to feel pain equivalent to the cut of the knife that had sliced her open in the first place, and she cringed as a searing, burning sensation lanced through the still-open-but-healing wound, choking out a whimper and then biting it back just as quickly. She was, however, unable to stop the tears that leaked from her eyes as a result of the pain. “I—I’m ok,” she gasped when she cracked open her eyes to find Stranger’s masked father regarding her sternly. “Hurry, before he comes back and flips out on both of us.”

                With an amused grunt and a nod, Vegeta did as she bade, moving on to her back, pleased that she seemed to know his son well enough to know that outrage would be his very first reaction if he returned to find his father putting his mate through more agony after everything she’d already been through. “Just grit your teeth and endure,” he rumbled, watching her approvingly when Moon only wept silently through the pain as he spread a generous layer of the ointment over her shoulders. “I cut myself on purpose and tried some before I left,” he informed her when he reached the center of her back—by far the worst section, where the muscle had shown through in places last night as they’d scrubbed it of the filth caked into the whip wounds—and her mouth opened in a silent scream that was only stopped by the fact that her upper vocal chords were still shredded. “I know it burns like hellfire, and I’m sorry for that. But it works.”

                “Uh-huh,” she whimpered weakly. “It’d better… because this… this—oh g—!”

                “Hey Father, can I add some sugar to this tea, it smells like it’s going to be bit—“ Shock saved his father from being put through the wall at first, but once Trunks’s beast had usurped control, Usagi was the one that saved the elder prince from a savage beating—at least, until Vegeta had ascended to Super Saiyan God, that is.

                “No! Go!” Usagi sobbed, sucking in great gulps of air and then gripping the sheets with white knuckles when Stranger’s father continued. “J—Just go! He’s al—almost done!”

                It took until the count of ten to get his beast leashed, but once he had, Trunks shook his head stubbornly and knelt beside the bed, stretching his arm across it to grip her hand in his. “I’ll be damned if I just slink off into the kitchen when you need me, angel,” he rumbled dutifully. “But if you don’t hurry the fuck up with that shit, Father, I’m going to beat you bloody,” Trunks added towards Vegeta with a snarl.

                “Feh… you’ll try, boy,” Vegeta retorted with a roll of his eyes. “And then you’ll lose. Now, do you want to continue kneeling there, making _completely empty threats_ …” He paused at that, staring his son down patiently for both Trunks’s and the moon girl’s benefit—not only did Vegeta not want to wholly embarrass his son by beating him into the dirt in front of his mate, but the moon girl definitely did _not_ need the added stress of a physical confrontation between two Saiyan alphas in such tight quarters—hoping that for once the stubborn temper that Trunks had inherited from both parents wouldn’t win against the knowledge that what his father was doing was necessary to heal her. “…or are you going to get back in the kitchen and finish making that tea?”

                “The tea can wait,” Trunks argued stubbornly.

                “No! It _can’t_!” Vegeta snapped at him loudly. “It needs to be taken within three minutes of finishing the treatment or it’ll only heal her throat and it won’t finish the job that the ointment started! If you have to start it over when I finish, that’s five minutes, _not_ three, and forcing her to endure this was _pointless_! So stop being selfish and stubborn and MOVE YOUR ASS!”

                “It’s ok, Stranger,” Usagi rasped out, leaning into his hand when he wiped at her tears, squeezing the other that held hers tightly. “Go. I’ll be ok… promise.”

                “Alright,” Trunks agreed, his voice strained as he squeezed her hand in return… and then released it before leaving the room.

                “Good,” Vegeta grunted, “you handled him well. Now… we’re over the worst of it. Ready?” He asked as he coated his hands in more of the salve.

                With a brave nod, Usagi gripped the sheets on the bed, and as soon as he resumed applying the ointment, she wanted nothing more than to scream. She would have, too… but since her vocal chords still didn’t work, her scream was thankfully silent, just like the last one. If it hadn’t been, Stranger would’ve surely come rushing back in to stop his father with a fist to his face.

                “Just about done,” Vegeta murmured reassuringly as he reached her lower back and folded the sheet down enough to just barely cover the tops of her thighs while leaving her raw buttocks exposed, aching with sympathy for her as he spoke his next words. “With your back, that is.” When Moon turned her head to look at him with pained blue eyes, the Prince of all Saiyans stopped for a moment and sighed. “I brought a painkiller with me… an injection. But it’ll make you high as a kite. I would’ve offered it sooner,” he explained quickly, “but I’ve taken it once… and only once. Never again,” Vegeta said under his breath.

                “What are the side effects?” Usagi asked knowingly. Judging by the haunted look in his eyes and the brief, strong flicker of remembered terror that she read through her empathy, Stranger’s father had endured one hell of a time thanks to whatever was in the drug… and if such a strong, brave, aggressive man was horrified by the idea of taking it again, she was pretty damned sure that she didn’t even want to _think_ about trying it.

                “Extremely vivid dreams,” he answered honestly, unsurprised to watch her eyes widen for a moment before she shook her head firmly. “Yeah, trust me, girl… I took it _years_ after my torture had ended, but I still woke my mate with my screams… out loud _and_ through the bond. Even worse, my mate couldn’t wake me for over thirty minutes, no matter what she did or how hard she tried to shake me or slap me. I don’t even want to imagine the nightmares you’d have after only a day out of captivity. That’s why I didn’t even bother to offer it until I remembered the slashes on your chest.”

                At his mention of the lacerations littering her belly and breasts, Usagi blushed hotly and shook her head. “Um… I mean… you don’t have to?” She said, the statement sounding like a mortified question just before she jumped and sucked in a sharp breath in reaction to the searing, burning sensation brought on by his hands coating her backside in ointment. “Ow!” She whimpered, swallowing tears when he turned the sheet down a little further to get the tops of her thighs, trembling from a combination of her body’s reaction to the pain and the knowledge that that was as far as the whip marks went—thank the gods, they were done with one side.

                “Good girl,” Vegeta rumbled approvingly as he wiped the remaining layer of ointment on his hands over some shallow cuts on her arms. “Proud of you,” he added awkwardly, his tone of voice just as uncomfortable when he hesitantly patted the shoulder that lacked the circular bruise left by his son while they’d both been sleeping. “Tougher than you look.”

                Coming from the man that Stranger had told her over a million different stories about, Usagi knew that those three words were almost as rare as another set of three little words, and when she turned her head in pleased surprise, she found her soon-to-be father-in-law regarding her with quite a bit of respect—and not just in his eyes, either, but through her empathy.

                Her thoughts must have shown on her face, too, because Stranger’s father tipped his head slightly in acknowledgement of exactly what he was thinking, giving the shoulder he’d just patted a light squeeze. “I don’t know if you’ve worried about whether or not I’d approve,” he informed her quietly, “but I know my son has. I want you to know, here and now, that I do. You’re worthy of a Saiyan prince, moon girl… and don’t you _dare_ let anyone else tell you otherwise. _Ever_. Now… lie still. I need to dress your back with a piece of sheet or some gauze or something.”

                As Usagi nodded, she opened her mouth to address him, but the sudden knowledge that she didn’t know what to call him stopped her short… at least for a few seconds, during which Stranger’s father had turned to the closet in order to find a spare flat sheet. “ _Ja’ta_ ,” she whispered respectfully, only to smile weakly up at him when he turned and stared at her in surprise, followed by what Usa guessed was an actual, genuine smile, though she couldn’t see any of his face except for his eyes, all thanks to his bandanna. “Stranger and I would sit up on one roof in particular and he would help me study and do my homework. When he found out two months ago that the only subjects I’ve _never_ made anything less than an A in were my foreign language courses…” She shrugged at that, her cheeks heating up as she recalled one her deepest fantasies for the millionth time, during which Stranger breathed words of desire and love in her ear in that rough-sounding language as he moved inside of her, as he demanded her surrender to him, as he ordered her to come for him over and over again until he finally ordered her to come _with_ him. “Um… well… I’ve only learned a little, but… Stranger said that I’m learning a lot faster than he did.”  

                “Oh? _Ho’ta m’yo at’rot au ih tor’ir ba pibhi’chau_?” Vegeta snorted, only to sigh in slight disappointment when the moon girl made a confused face, an expression that told him that she hadn’t understood some or all of the sentence.

                “ _F’ri_ ,” Usagi rasped when Vegeta opened his mouth, probably to say in her native language what he’d just said in his. “I get hung up on the numbers, that’s all,” she explained with a slight blush of embarrassment. “Numbers confuse me in any language… so… _ba pibhi’chau_ … uh… hm… it took him _eight_ years to learn it? I think?” She finally asked hopefully after mulling it over for a handful of seconds.

                “No, but not bad, girl. Nine years. You were close. Now… I can hear my son putting the tea back in the microwave, so you need to tell me now if you’re comfortable with me treating your other side,” Vegeta continued as he easily tore the sheet into quarters and applied one of them down the length of her back and buttocks far more gently than she’d expected of him, smoothing it down to ensure that it would stick to the thick layer of salve he’d just applied.

                “ _Ja’ta_ … would it bother _you_ to do it?” Usagi asked. “Because I’d hate to ask Stranger to, but… I _am_ his mate… right? Or… I will be soon, anyway. If he wants me to be,” she added with a hint of worry in her eyes and the rasp of her broken voice.

                “And why the fuck _wouldn’t_ he want you to be?” Vegeta spat out before he could stop himself, too astonished by the question itself to stop his outburst. “That boy’s been head over ass in love with you since the moment he met you, girl! You two felt the pull, for Cha’s sake! Are you _insane_!?” He had more to say, but he swallowed it all and bit his tongue when her  chin and lower lip suddenly trembled and fresh tears filled her eyes so quickly that they almost immediately spilled over, dripping onto the pillow like salty rain. “Wait, oh gods… gods no… no—don’t— _please_ don’t— ** _tapa_** ,” Vegeta swore as he sat on the bed and cupped her uninjured cheek to turn her face upwards when she tried to look away from him. “Moon girl… what’s your name?”

                “U—Usagi,” she sobbed. “W—Why?”

                “Usagi,” Vegeta rumbled in a gentle tone—a tone that only Bulma and his children had ever heard, and even for them, it was a rarity— as he made eye contact with her and held her gaze, “tell me the truth… that rat bastard I killed yesterday…” He sighed quietly, wiping at her tears with the edge of the sheet, preparing himself for the worst… and for the prospect of pulling his only son outside to inform him that mating with the love of his life wouldn’t be possible for quite some time. Possibly even years. Maybe only months, since the moon girl seemed to be made of tougher stuff than most girls her age—but in all fairness, Vegeta was tough, too.

But for Vegeta, it’d been well over ten years since the last rape before he’d been able to think of sex without shivering in fear.

                And that had been _after_ he’d felt the pull for Bulma, after months and months of denial… and even when he’d given the temperamental, blue-haired genius his virginity, Vegeta had had a difficult time of it. He’d been on top during every coupling throughout the first three years with _no_ exceptions, and it wasn’t until the first six months had passed that he hadn’t pinned her wrists behind her head. Thankfully for him, Bulma had understood, had been patient with him, and had been kind and considerate in bed, even during the handful of times where he’d found himself pounding into her with a scary sort of intensity that was brought on by that underlying fear, that terror he’d experienced during those first few years whenever he hadn’t felt like he was in control.

                With all of that in mind, Vegeta somehow finally managed to finish his sentence, his obsidian eyes locked with tear-filled crystal blue. “Usagi… _ho’sh m’yo_. Did he rape you? Answer honestly,” he added before she could answer, “and know that I am the _last_ person in all creation that would judge you for it. I’d be the first to tell you to never feel an ounce of shame for what someone else did to you. Understand me?”

                Through her empathy, Usagi sensed from Stranger’s father all of the same emotions that she’d once felt rolling off of a rape victim, down at the hospital where she sometimes volunteered, and his question and his sudden, out of character shift to quiet and gentle from sympathetically awkward made complete and total sense. “No, _ja’ta_ ,” she sighed, “if An hadn’t been there… I don’t know what would have happened. He wanted to, I could tell, that he would’ve had me whether I wanted it or not… but An _was_ there, and Ail knew she’d kill him and me both for such a thing, even if it meant that she would die, too. Honestly, in some weird way, I’m grateful she was there. I know that sounds insane, but… _that_ , added to everything else they did to me…? I think it would have killed me. Even if I’d survived it physically, it would have killed everything I am, everything inside of me.”

                “Good,” Vegeta sighed in complete and utter relief. “Thank the gods for that one small favor. The way you spoke to him earlier, I figured you hadn’t been forced,” he confessed with a blush and a shrug, “but then when you questioned whether or not he’d… … …wait. Why in the hell would you think for _even a minute_ that Stranger wouldn’t want you, then?”

                With that question, Usagi was pushed right to the brink of tears, yet again. “M—My scars,” she whispered miserably. “I—I—I w—was… p—pr—pretty… b—but now I’m…”

                When she dissolved into wracking sobs that were mostly silent because of her damaged larynx, Vegeta sputtered and huffed in disbelief, pinching the bridge of his nose as he prayed to Cha for patience. “Clearly, my son taught you nothing of our culture. Turn over while I explain, we’ve spent too much time talking and we only have a thirty seconds to a minute left before the tea’s ready. Unless you want the boy to do this part while I finish the tea?” He added, well aware that the concept of modesty for Lunarians and humans was vastly different than that of his own people, and that allowing her father-in-law to see and touch her naked body—even for strictly medical purposes—was simply something that she might not be able to permit.

                “No,” Usagi replied without hesitation as she slowly rolled onto her back, her cheeks flaming as she squinted her eyes shut out of pure mortification. “I think it would kill him to hurt me. Just do it… and please… hurry? This… this is _really_ embarrassing, _ja’ta_. Just—“ She’d been about to tell him to keep talking in order to distract her from her shame, but he’d started immediately and Usa could only hiss in reaction to the burning agony lancing through her right breast. Her mouth opened in a silent shriek next, when a calloused finger spread a coat of the ointment over the areola of her right nipple, tracing the deep line that An’s knife had made on the third or fourth day before Ail had walked in. An had just stated that she’d decided to cut Usa’s nipple off when her lover had arrived, and thankfully, he’d overheard her and he’d stopped her by shoving her down and away from Usagi, swearing that if anything went missing from Usa’s body, he’d make damned sure that An’s body would be made to match.

                That had been the same day that Ail had asked Usagi to be his. In exchange for killing his sister. He’d been furious when she’d denied him, furious enough that the whipping that had followed had torn the flesh from the center of her back until the muscles had shown through, leaving scars that would almost assuredly _never_ fade, even after hundreds of years. “ _Ja’ta_ ,” she croaked through the tears pouring liberally down the sides of her face to further soak the pillow under her head. “Please… _please_ t—talk to me? It hurts!”

                Vegeta didn’t have the slightest clue what to talk about, but after several seconds of giving her further agony, he recalled what he’d been about to say when he’d realized the real reason for the moon girl’s irrational fear over whether or not his son would still want her after he saw the scars she bore nearly everywhere. “In my culture—the Saiyan culture,” he began as he raised a single hand and flared his ki in a single word— ** _wait_** —towards the scent of fury, Trunks, and Bulma’s healing tea towards the figure that he didn’t have to look at to know that it was standing in the doorway. “Scars aren’t considered ugly. Quite the contrary. They’re beautiful. They’re a testament to your strength. Hell… you should’ve seen my bodyguard’s chest and back when I was growing up… his name was Nappa, and he was the oldest Saiyan alive. The strongest Saiyan alive as well, behind myself, my father, and a little shit named Broly. Shit, I’m covered in so many scars that my mate says I look like a topographical map,” he added with a chuckle, pleased when despite the pain, Usagi’s lips twitched up in a brief flicker of a weak smile.

“They’re proof that I endured fifteen years of torture and slavery. Yours are proof that you endured the same treatment. That you survived it. They’re your own personal testament. They’re tangible proof that you’re as tough as nails when it counts… and Usagi? Don’t you dare let _any_ jackass tell you otherwise. But if you can’t see it that way… my mate _is_ working on something just for you, and since she’s pretty much the smartest woman in the world, let’s just say that the odds of getting rid of the scars someday are high.”

                Sucking in a sharp inhalation as Stranger’s father moved down from her fully treated breasts to her raw, lacerated belly, Usagi followed that with a sniffle and slowly wiped at the tears that simply would not cease. “So you… y—you mean that Stranger…? That h—he…?”

                “He already thinks that the sun shines directly out your ass, girl,” Vegeta replied dryly, signaling his son sharply in their ki language not to speak or move or let Moon know that he was present and listening to every word. **_Boy, you need to hear this. This is the time for listening, not talking. Trust me, something that any woman is_** _this **self-conscious about is something that she almost definitely will not voice around you, and you’d do well to take advantage of this opportunity. The gods themselves know that I’d kill to have known all of your mother’s fears and worries when we’d first mated.**_

When Trunks sighed quietly and nodded towards his father before fixing his worried eyes on Moon, he silently thanked his father in Ki when the older prince continued.

                “If anything, the scars’ll make you downright irresistible to him… and they most definitely _will_ where his beast is concerned, but don’t be surprised if he won’t… well… you know,” Vegeta sputtered as he got hung up on the vulgarity of discussing the subject of his son having sex. “Mate with you,” he finished lamely. “Not right away, anyway.”

                “Why?” Usa choked out, grasping at the conversation, listening hard to the cadence of her father-in-law’s low, rough voice in an effort to block out the fierce pain still rolling through her. “I—but I thought that—ah! Hurts!”

                “Yeah, this cut was pretty deep,” Vegeta murmured apologetically before once more picking up the current, uncomfortable line of conversation. “As I was saying, _ho’sh m’yo_ , his beast may very well refuse to mate with you simply because it’s terrified of hurting you on accident. Mates can’t hurt each other,” he added as he realized that she probably didn’t know that. “Which is mostly why it’s _me_ in here doing this… and not him. Stranger’s beast is very likely to push everything back in favor of nursing you back to health… even if all this stuff my mate’s developed for you in her lab fully, completely heals you within a couple hours just as she said it should. She developed it with your DNA, after all, pulled from a few strands of your hair that were on my shirt from when we cleaned you up, so I have every bit of faith that this will work.”

                “ _Ja’ta_ ,” Usagi whimpered, trembling as she fought down the desire to sob uncontrollably in reaction to the news that Stranger might not keep his promise, that he’d change his mind. When combined with the physical agony she was experiencing, the moon princess was teetering on the verge of an emotional breakdown. “If—if he d—doesn’t… if he won’t—“

                Eyeing his son and the pained expression on his face told Vegeta loud and clear that he was right about the boy’s beast, that it had or was currently suggesting holding back, doing its best to convince Trunks that they would only hurt her further. “Girl,” Vegeta grunted, leaning down until his lips were right at her ear. “If it comes to that,” he whispered just quietly enough so that Trunks wouldn’t hear him from across the room, “tell him that he’d hurt you worse than everything you’ve already endured—the torture, the starvation, being forced to drink sewer water, _all_ of it—if he refuses you. Ask him if he’s rejecting you, if he doesn’t want you anymore. Then, you tell him this, word for word: _m’eh t’ui au_ , _r’sha m’yo. Ih au t’uh m’eh, m’eh k’hir. M’eh t’au._ You get all of that?”

                “Y—yes, _ja’ta, d’in m’yo_ ,” Usa rasped as she realized that he’d stopped treating the cuts on her body. “Keep going… it’s ok. I won’t cry anymore,” she added with what little bravery she still possessed, her jaw tight as she opened her eyes and looked up at him to find his eyes crinkled up at the corners, telling her that he was smiling behind the bandanna.  

                “I’ve been done for over a minute, girlie. Boy,” he called towards the doorway, chuckling when Usagi’s face turned the color of pickled beets. “No worries, he was only standing there for the part I whispered in your ear,” he said, chuckling under his breath as he lied to her, “and he didn’t hear a word of it. Now…” Grabbing another torn piece of sheet, Vegeta oh-so-delicately laid it over Usagi’s chest, followed by a much smaller piece to her cheek, taking every bit of care possible to make sure that the linen stuck to the salve, at the same time ensuring that he did it as gently as he could so as not to hurt her any further. She’d been through enough for an entire lifetime as far as Vegeta was concerned, let alone one measly fucking day.

                Sailor Moon needed a break—from fighting, from stress, from day-to-day life itself— and he and Bulma were going to make doubly sure that Usa and their son weren’t interrupted for at least a month unless it was absolutely necessary.

                _Yes_ , Vegeta decided as he watched, with only minimal embarrassment, the tenderness in his son’s hands and movements as he carefully sat his mate up in the bed without bumping up against the wounds that still burned a little and would until they’d completed all of Bulma’s instructions.

                “Here, angel. Eat this senzu,” Trunks murmured as he kissed the crescent on her forehead, then her lips, purring softly in loving comfort as she ate the bean directly from between his thumb and forefinger. “Good… now drink up. I heard Dad say that all of this should have you healed in about an hour. Right, Dad?” Trunks asked hopefully as he tenderly ran his fingers through the unbound, spun gold of his mate’s hair.

                “Hn,” Vegeta replied with a nod, only to huff at himself in annoyance and dig around in his pocket for something else that Bulma had given him to give to the girl, something that he’d only been reminded of as he’d thought how her hair still shone gold even in the dark. “Shit. Damn it… thankfully, this wasn’t part of the tea or salve and didn’t need to be timed,” he grumbled as he found and withdrew a small bottle of eye drops. “Should help your eyes adjust to the light again a little faster,” he explained as he handed it to Trunks, since Usa was busy drinking the tea as quickly as the hot temperature would allow. The crown prince of Vegeta-sei then proceeded to dig in the other pocket for a bottle that Ami had given him, and once he’d fished it out, he handed it to his son as well. “Special, strong antibiotics. Mercury sent them, girl. She said… well, never mind,” he grunted, shrugged when Usagi looked up at him questioningly. “It was a whole bunch of human technical, medical bullshit and I didn’t understand a quarter of it,” he lied.

                In reality, Ami had given him the bottle of antibiotics the moment Vegeta had told her and Nappa about Usagi being forced to drink sewer water, her ocean-blue eyes wide and full of tears as she’d gone into the bathroom to dig around in the medicine cabinet for the bottle. Thankfully for the prince, he’d only been forced to endure awkwardly squeezing her shoulder in comfort for a few moments when she’d erupted into a fit of guilty, sympathetic tears for her liege—Nappa had saved his royal ass from trying to comfort a crying woman that wasn’t his mate, and Vegeta was actually _still_ grateful to the enormous oaf for the save, even hours later.

                Sure, that crying woman _was_ Nappa’s woman and comforting her was Nappa’s responsibility, but he was still immensely grateful to have been bailed out, nonetheless. Grateful enough that he’d agreed to allow Nappa to train with himself, Kakarot, and Kakarot’s youngest spawn. After all, with Trunks out of the picture indefinitely, they were a man short, and while they could always do three-way spars, Goten would honestly only slow Vegeta’s and Kakarot’s training pace down. Nappa could train with the boy, and if he couldn’t keep up, Goten would surely be happy to beat him into the ground repeatedly until Nappa had benefitted from enough power boosts to match his level. Heh… maybe Vegeta would give Gohan a call later on; something told the prince that Kakarot’s older son would jump at the chance for a little payback.

                “What’s funny, Father?” Trunks asked when he heard Vegeta chuckle.

                “Heh… I was imagining the outcome of a match between Nappa and Gohan,” the prince admitted, so engrossed in the idea of Gohan pummeling Nappa into a mound of raw hamburger that he didn’t even think before speaking. “Something tells me the college boy might actually find Super Saiyan Two again, should he fight the warrior that killed his mentor when Gohan was a child. To be fair, though… Nappa wasn’t aiming for the Namekian; the dumbass threw himself into the blast to save Gohan. Still… the thought of nerd boy actually taking revenge is highly amusing.”

                “Wait. Wait wait wait… back up,” Trunks said hurriedly. “Are you telling me that **_Nappa_** , your old partner, the guy that raised you and the guy you killed… … …is **_alive_**!?”

                “ _M’eh at’rot au Mercury tor’ir k’sha_ ,” Vegeta snorted in Saiyan, hoping that Usagi wouldn’t have enough command of the language to comprehend. After all, he didn’t want to spill the beans and piss off Ami. Not if he could help it, anyway. Not when he’d just made tentative amends with Nappa that morning. “As for the how of it all, the wish that Popo made years ago that resurrected everyone killed by Frieza and his men? I was still technically one of those men when I killed Nappa, so he was brought back along with everyone else. He’s became of a movie producer of all things… don’t ask me how.”

                “Holy shit,” Trunks whispered as he glanced over the directions on the bottle of antibiotics, removed one capsule, and handed it to Usagi. “Probably won’t hurt to take it with the tea, angel. When you’re done drinking,” he added as she took the pill and continued to sip, “I’ll put those eyedrops in for you.” Turning back to his father when she nodded up at him in the dark with a blush—but still no smile—Trunks shook his head in wonder. “Well… I suppose that explains why the most popular movies over the last couple of decades have seemed so unbelievably stupid,” he quipped, grinning when his father belted out a loud, genuine laugh. “Yes, you can steal that line when you see him next. May as well give you permission when you’re going to do it anyway,” he chuckled.

                “Damn right I am,” Vegeta chortled, followed by a jump of surprise and a bugged-out stare at his daughter when Usagi began to choke on her tea with wide, blue eyes.

                Thankfully for her, both Saiyans remembered her raw back and the current state of it, so she was spared the agony of having it instinctively slapped when she sputtered and cleared her throat loudly before yelling hoarsely up at Vegeta. “AMI’S **_MATED_**!? **_AMI!? AMI_** went and **got married** and didn’t tell **_anyone_**!? And she got married **to a friend of yours**!? Some man that **raised** you!? How old **is** he!? **_OH MY GOD_**!”

                “To be fair,” Trunks snickered, “she would’ve known once we’d mated, Father.”

                “Fuck,” Vegeta sighed, “so much for keeping it a secret. I’d hoped her command of the Saiyan language wasn’t good enough to figure out what I’d said, but…” Rather than finishing that sentence, the prince simply made a frustrated hand wave in her direction, even as he felt a swell of pride at the knowledge that she’d learned so much Saiyan in such a short amount of time.

                “Took me a minute to translate it,” Usagi admitted in a whisper as she rubbed at her sore throat, mentally noting that it was already beginning to feel better—whether from the tea or the senzu or both, she didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. Progress was progress and she’d take it any way she could get it. “Wow… Ami. Married. And she’s so shy around men that I never thought she’d actually… … …wow. Just wow,” the princess finished with an awe-filled shake of her head, followed by the slow smile that Stranger had ached to see and had tried so hard to get her to produce. “Good for her,” Usa finally whispered after a long, slow drink of the last of her tea, wiping at the tears of happiness she’d produced out of joy for her first Senshi and one of her closest friends. “I wish she’d told us, but… I understand why she didn’t. I won’t say anything, _ja’ta_ ,” she added towards Vegeta, turning her smile on him with a decisive nod. “I know how easily Ami gets embarrassed, and I don’t want to do that to her. I’ll try and act surprised when she finally decides to tell us.”

                “Good girl,” Vegeta praised softly, opening his mouth to say something else, then closing it when his cell phone rang. “Ugh… it’s your mother, boy. Hang on.”

                “If he doesn’t take the call,” Stranger informed Moon as he sat beside her on the bed and adjusted the blanket wrapped around her to keep her warm, “Mom’ll blow dad’s phone the fuck up… until he gets pissed and literally blows his phone up just to silence it. Then Mom’ll yell at him for over an hour because it means she has to reload all of his contacts, since Dad doesn’t know how to and couldn’t possibly care less about learning how to.”

                He was trying to make her smile again and Usagi knew it, but she could only manage a tiny flicker of one as she leaned into the arm gingerly wrapped around her back, which was surprisingly… “Itchy,” she grumbled softly, blinking in pleased surprise when the softly spoken word didn’t hurt her throat at all. “My back, it itches. Hm… and my throat doesn’t hurt,” she said a little louder, only to wince when it did hurt when she spoke at a higher volume. “Never mind.”

                “Hey, Dad!” Trunks exclaimed ecstatically as he carefully tugged down the blanket around her shoulders and peeled the dressing on her back away just enough to have a look before replacing it. “It’s working! It’s working way faster than I thought it would! Tell Mom!”

                “ _Nee at’rot ‘d’in m’yo’ ih m’eh, buh’tir_ ,” Usagi added, that tiny smile playing on her lips once more when Vegeta flashed her a proud grin in response to her Saiyan.

                “Ok, now you’re just showing off,” Stranger chuckled in her ear before giving the lobe a playful nip.

                It had worked, though, since Vegeta was gloating to his mate. “…yeah, you heard right, woman! The boy’s mate speaks Saiyan! He’s been teaching her for only two months and—yeah, you heard right!” He repeated, crowing triumphantly. “Only _two months_! That’s as fast as you learned it, Miss Genius! Heh… yup, not fluent, but proficient. Yuuuup.” After a pause, during which Bulma asked if she would be alright in the long run, Vegeta grew serious, glancing over at his new daughter and giving her a slow nod. “Yes… I think so. We should do as we discussed earlier… yes, exactly. It would do them both some good,” he added as he turned away from the couple sitting on the bed in time to miss Trunks turning Usagi’s face to his.

                “What are they talking about?” Usa asked softly.

 “I can hear my mom—Saiyan ears,” he explained with a shrug, “and she’s saying something about supplies, the cabin, privacy and—“ Trunks blushed hotly at that and sputtered. “Ugh… that is _none_ of her business, damn it.”

Judging by Stranger’s blush and the fact that Usagi could see a hint of red between the bandanna covering his father’s face and his obsidian eyes, the older Saiyan was just as embarrassed as the younger. “I take it she’s discussing your promise to me,” the princess said tactfully, red in the face at the prospect of her mother-in-law—still a stranger to her—talking about Usa’s bedroom activities.

“Ugh,” he repeated with a shudder as he heard his mother say, ‘Oh, come on, sexy man! Don’t be such a prude! You know as well as I do that the moment you leave, they’re going to partake in some horizontal sparring!’ “My mother’s so vulgar,” Trunks whimpered just as they both heard Vegeta shout, ‘Gods! You—you— _vulgar woman_! What’s wrong with you!? He’s your son! _My_ son! Don’t talk about him like that!’

“See?” Stranger snorted, “my father agrees.”

“I can see that,” Usagi replied with only mild amusement as she turned to him, tentatively laying a hand on his chest as she locked her big blue eyes with his. “Stranger… I hate to bother you, but… is there anything to eat here? And an extra toothbrush, maybe?”

At the mention of the toothbrush, Trunks somehow managed not to visibly cringe as he nodded, knowing exactly why she wanted one and for long she’d gone without, instead flashing her a grin as he carefully scooped her up—blanket and all for modesty’s sake—and carried her to the bathroom. Settling her on the closed toilet seat as gently as possible, his grin gentled to a soft smile as he kissed her forehead. “Lucky for us, we always keep a couple extras around just in case my buddy, Goten, crashes for the night after sparring all day. And Moon? You’re not a bother. You never will be, angel.”

“Thank you, Stranger,” she whispered, suddenly shy in the face of the look of adoration on his face as he smiled down at her and kissed the crescent on her brow once more. He didn’t say anything else for the moment, however; instead, he had a brand-new toothbrush in her hand in moments, complete with a dollop on toothpaste on the bristles. Usagi gratefully shoved it in her mouth, sighing blissfully as she scrubbed her teeth, standing halfway through to spit in the sink and add some more toothpaste from the tube on the counter.

As she was scrubbing her tongue and grimacing down at the toothbrush on occasion, Trunks unwrapped a second new toothbrush from its packaging and handed it over. “I know what you’re thinking and I don’t blame you. Here.”

Extremely grateful that she didn’t have to explain, Usagi threw the soiled toothbrush in the trash as soon as she’d finished brushing her tongue and gums, spit in the sink, and gratefully took the cup of water Stranger offered her, followed by the mouthwash he held out to her after she’d rinsed her mouth out and spit in the sink. “I really hope you’re going to choose not to even think about the fact that you’ve kissed me several times between now and when you rescued me,” Usagi remarked as she readied the fresh toothbrush and cut the water on to rinse out the sink as she avoided looking too closely at the white foam she’d spit out. Too much scrutinizing of the former contents of her mouth would surely find her convinced that there was some kind of human waste in the used toothpaste… and not only did she _not_ feel like vomiting up the healing tea that she very much needed to keep in her stomach, but Usagi simply just wanted to think about anything involving her time in captivity as much as she wanted to think about shoving needles into her eyeballs.

“The thought occurred to me,” Trunks admitted, “but you should know that I didn’t taste anything horrid.” To be fair, however, he’d wanted to kiss her for so long that every single time he had, that had been all he could think about… the fact that he was _finally_ kissing his angel, the love of his life and his destined mate. He would probably think of little else for the rest of his life whenever he kissed her, since Trunks was pretty positive that the novelty of kissing her would never wear off. “In fact, now I want you to hurry up and finish so that I can kiss you again… with tongue,” he added as his beast began to purr enticingly at the very idea, the quiet, seductive pattern of it filling the small bathroom as Trunks chuckled at the sight of her red face and the way her eyes began to dart away from the toothbrush moving vigorously in her mouth and the green eyes fixed on her face.

Concentrating on brushing her teeth as thoroughly as possible, Usagi managed to only squeak—surprised to hear the sound, reflecting that her throat was healing much faster than she thought it would—when Stranger kissed her neck, his stubble rasping against the sensitive flesh as he continued to repeatedly move his lips over her pulse and from her collarbone to her ear. “Stranger,” she murmured around the toothbrush’s handle, “what… what are…”

“I’m trying not to make love to you for the first time in the bathroom, that’s what I’m doing,” he breathed in her ear. “I’m _trying_ to wait for my father to leave… and for your wounds to heal. Pretty sure that this is gonna be the longest hour of my life.”

The confirmation that he really was going to keep his promise put not only tears in her eyes, but a radiant smile on her face as well—the smile he’d so desperately wanted to see and now didn’t and couldn’t because his mouth was busy worshipping her neck—and once she’d spit in the sink, taken a mouthful of water and rinsed, she gripped Stranger’s chin and forcefully turned his face to hers. “Only forty-five minutes left,” she whispered before kissing him, immediately parting her lips beneath his when his tongue sought hers out.

Trunks chuckled into the kiss as he thought of a wonderfully productive way to use that forty-five minutes, should his father leave immediately, but all thoughts of keeping his face buried in her wet, silky folds for three-quarters of an hour went right out the window when he remembered that she was hungry… and that while all of the senzu she’d eaten since yesterday would certainly sustain her, Moon hadn’t eaten anything else in over a week. “Come on,” he murmured reluctantly between kisses, “…food… angel…”

“He’s right,” Vegeta grunted from the doorway, interrupting them only because Trunks was absolutely correct to make sure his mate was fed before the two of them started going at it like rabbits. “Besides, my mate says that you really do need to eat for the healing to be as effective as possible.” The Saiyan prince snorted when his son scooped up the moon girl immediately at the sound of those words and edged past him in the doorway, headed for the kitchen, and Vegeta followed them with a smile playing on his lips at the sight of Trunks carefully settling Usagi into a chair at table. “Your mother sent capsules, thank the gods,” he informed them as he extracted one from his pocket and tossed it onto the table.

The four-seater kitchen table was instantly covered with a spread big enough to feed eight people—or two mildly hungry Saiyans—and Usagi stared at it all with wide eyes for several moments before pinching her arm as hard as she could. “Ow… holy… I guess that means it’s all real,” she breathed in wonder.

Pulling up a chair right next to hers, Trunks grabbed a plate and went straight to her favorite foods, piling them on before snagging some chopsticks to hold a bite of tempura to her lips. “Eat, angel. It’s really real, promise.” When she didn’t hesitate to take the offering and she quickly devoured it, Trunks’s beast began to purr up a storm, and he was ready with another bite before she swallowed, smiling happily when she took it… and the next… and the next… and the next.

After the sixth mouthful, Usagi stopped and took the chopsticks from him, followed by the plate, giving him a confused look. “I _can_ feed myself, Stranger.”

“It’s a Saiyan thing,” he and Vegeta both said at the same time, both of them wearing identical smirks at the sight of her expression and the way she quickly took her plate from Trunks to chow down.

“ _And_ she eats like one,” the crown prince added with a chortle of amusement as he loaded down his own plate and began to eat, shoving food carefully under his bandanna. “That’s good… my grandbrats’ll be strong. None of that sissy stuff like your mother did when she was carrying you, boy. She ate like a bird and complained about not wanting to get fat, and when she _did_ eat, it was mostly rabbit food. Until, of course, you sucked her dry of all her calcium and protein, made her anemic, put her in the hospital… and I got to say ‘I told you so,’” he finished with a snicker, speaking between bites.

“Wow, kind of an asshole thing to do,” Usagi replied with her mouth half-full. “Yeah, she should’ve eaten more, but at the same time—“

“Dad’s—“ Coughing loudly, Trunks pounded on his chest as he tried not to choke on his sashimi, shaking his head vigorously at his frowning father. “Dad’s… um… _not_ the same man he was when I was a baby,” he finally sputtered. “Let’s um… leave it at that, ok?”

“Yeah,” Vegeta finally stated as he tried not to glare at his son’s mate. “Let’s leave it at that. I’m fully aware I was a dick without you pointing it out, girl… but I _did_ warn the woman, in all fairness. She just refused to listen when I told her a Saiyan brat would be hard on her little human body. Just as it’ll probably be hard on a Lunarian body… hn… probably not as bad, though. Stranger tells me you’re made of tougher stuff than a human. And I’ve seen you fight on television. Not bad.”

Unwilling to start an argument with one of the men that had saved her life—and Stranger’s father, at that—Usagi just shrugged. “Not so great this last time… but thanks.”

Much to both hers and Stranger’s surprise, Vegeta growled at that and thumped the table with his fist. “Don’t you dare talk like that, do you understand me, Usagi? You hold your gods damned head up and you have pride in the fact that you survived. You were not only outnumbered, but cut off from your power… and you _survived_ , where _they_ didn’t. Always be proud of outliving your enemies.” Suddenly aware of his outburst when Usagi’s lips twitched up in a small, grateful smile, Vegeta blushed and sputtered, returning to his meal.

“ _Ja’ta… d’in m’yo_ ,” Usa whispered, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand, accepting his embarrassed grunt and nod as a ‘you’re welcome’ before sharing a smile with Stranger and returning to her meal as well.

It didn’t take long for the Saiyans to finish eating, but Usagi was still going strong and stuffing her face when they finished, though not because she was eating slowly. Oh no, she was eating at her usual breakneck pace, but after a week of eating nothing and draining her powers, that power desperately needed to be replenished, whether or not she would be healed by Stranger’s mother’s salve and tea.

“Should I break open another capsule?” Vegeta asked as he drank some coffee, careful not to show his face in the process, just as he’d done while eating.

At that, the moon princess looked up, and upon seeing that both of them had finished and were working on mugs of coffee, she blushed hotly in embarrassment, quickly pushing away her plate. “Um… my apologies,” she whispered, clearing her throat only to wince at the pain that still lingered, though she noted that the ache in her arms and legs from where they’d been broken was completely gone and that had back felt tight, and a little painful, but quite a bit better than it had been. “I didn’t mean to be rude or, um, unladylike,” she added as she felt her blush travel down her neck, recalling that Stranger’s father was a prince. “Oh dear gods, I just ate like that in front of royalty,” she whispered aloud in shocked humiliation.

At that, Vegeta snorted, the sound followed by laughter in stereo as he and Trunks both burst into hysterics simultaneously, unable to help themselves despite the fact that Usagi looked ready to start crying as she sat there and looked down at the floor in shame. “Moon! M—Moon,” Trunks stammered as he tried to stop laughing, grasping a porcelain hand between both of his own, an arm wrapping around her to pull her close in a heartfelt embrace. “Angel,” he finally purred warmly into her ear, “you know how I eat. I’ve told you how we _all_ eat… why should you feel shameful for doing the same?” Because that’s exactly what she was doing—beating herself up—and he knew it, and after he spoke those words, he frowned when he remembered _exactly why_ she felt bad.

Turning her face up to his, Stranger frowned and shook his head firmly. “He was an asshole, a dick, a douchebag, and he never deserved you, Moon… and I swear on my tail that if I ever meet him in purpose, I’m going to smash his nose through the back of his skull for the way he treated you. For the way he made you feel bad about yourself when there was never anything to feel bad about in the first place.”

“Oh. Him,” Vegeta realized aloud. “Stranger told me about him… and he’s right. Your ex is a fucking asshat, girl. Like our powers, yours need to be refueled, and it’s hardly your fault that he can’t appreciate a woman that can throw down on a good meal. He just wanted to make you feel bad about yourself so you’d think you were lucky to have a man at all, so you wouldn’t realize what a dickhead he was and leave him for a man you deserved. Now… eat,” he grunted. “You’ll need your strength to heal.”

Usagi nodded in response and understood on an intellectual level that they were both right, but after a moment, she sighed and shook her head. “I’m really not hungry, now,” she told Stranger softly. “Kind of tired, actually. _Ja’ta_ , when should we change my dressings? Or… do we need to?”

“Shouldn’t need to,” Vegeta stated before finishing his coffee. “However, call me if your back still hurts after a couple hours; my mate should’ve developed something new by then, knowing her. I’m going to take off for a while and let you two, um… get some rest,” he told them as he tried his best not to blush, perfectly aware of what would happen as soon as he left… if Trunks’s beast deemed her healed up well enough to participate in some indoor sports. “I’ll be back around moonrise with more food and to check your back. I’ll try to keep Stranger’s mother at bay for as long as I can, but she’ll probably try and follow me out here, knowing her.”

“Just go Blue, Dad,” Trunks chuckled as he absently ran his fingers through Moon’s hair and leashed the temptation to rudely hurry his father out the door. “No way in hell would Mom be able to even track you at that speed and you know it.”

“True, but you know as well as I do that the longer you put off letting your mother meet your mate, the worse it’s going to be on you. And me,” Vegeta grumbled.

While Usagi honestly didn’t want to meet anyone, and especially not Stranger’s mother while she was still so skittish, afraid, and covered in scars, she didn’t want to get him or his father in trouble, either, and gave Stranger a hesitant, nervous look. “I… if you want…? I mean… I can—“

“No,” Trunks said firmly, sighing apologetically and kissing her forehead when she winced. “Sorry,” he continued in a gentler tone, “but no. _Not_ until you’re ready. And Dad… you can tell Mom that I said that. Hell… _I’ll_ tell Mom that I said that. Not until you’re ready, Moon,” he repeated reassuringly. “Alright? You’ve been through a lot and I’ll be damned if anyone’s going to force you to do anything you’re not ready to.”

With a sigh of relief and a tender kiss to his lips, Usagi sagged into his arms and nodded. “Thank you, Stranger. _Ja’ta_ ,” she added softly, “it’s not that I don’t want to meet your mate, it’s just…” She waved at her face self-consciously, indicating her scar. “…I’m not ready for people. I… I’m scared. Please, if it’s alright, can it just be Stranger, and occasionally you that I have contact with? Just for a while? _Buh’tir_?”

“Of course. I’ll inform Ami of your decision and hopefully, all of your Senshi will respect it. But Usagi,” Vegeta added slowly, “remember what I said about your scars. And about pride. And survival. It’ll take time, I understand that, but you shouldn’t be ashamed of anything. You survived. You endured. They didn’t.”

“ _G’in, ja’ta_ ,” Usagi whispered, though she honestly didn’t agree with him. It would be a long time before she did, and even longer before she would actually feel pride and not just feel like Stranger’s father was right about it.

Vegeta left at that, taking off from the porch for Capsule Corp and his mate, and inside the cabin, Trunks gave Moon a slow smile full of anticipation and promise. “So… Usagi,” he said, rolling her name around in his mouth for the first time like he was savoring a fine wine. “Usagi… I like it. Though, honestly, I’ll probably still always call you ‘Moon.’ I hope you don’t mind, angel.”

“No, I don’t mind,” she giggled half-heartedly, still troubled by the idea of meeting anyone… ever. Even her Senshi. “I’ll still always call you Stranger. You know I will.”

“I don’t mind it, either,” he murmured as he leaned in to kiss her and let loose a quiet sound of pleasure when she immediately opened to him, threading her fingers through his hair as her tongue danced slowly with his and he carefully lifted her into his arms, cradling her to his chest.

When he set her on her feet, Usagi was surprised to find that he’d brought her to the bathroom and chuckled in amusement when he fingered the edge of the blanket she was wrapped in, clearly waiting for her permission to remove it. “I thought you were trying not to make love to me in the bathroom? At least not the very _first_ time,” she added with waggle of her eyebrows that was meant to mask her own nervousness.

“Oh. No,” Trunks replied, his cheeks hot at the implication. “The bedroom for that. Definitely the bedroom. I just wanted to check your wounds… if that’s alright? See if they’re healed? If they are, we’ll wash off the salve and _then_ … but _only_ if you want to…? If you’re feeling up to it?”

Usagi didn’t need to see the raw desire mixed with the pleading hope in his eyes to make her decision and was more than happy to tell him so. “Stranger, as I recall, I was begging you to love me in the dreamscape… and nothing’s changed since then.” Grasping the calloused hand resting near her collarbone and over the hem of the blanket, Usagi used his fingers to push it aside until it fell away on the left side, and if not for the dressing covering her chest, he would have gotten a good view of a bared breast.

Instead, Trunks glanced down at the partially exposed, trimmed thatch of golden hair between her thighs and licked his lips in anticipation as he pushed the rest of the blanket away, praying to any god that would listen, begging for Moon to be healed beneath the linens covering her wounds. “May I?” He asked, mildly surprised by his own politeness when she’d repeatedly told him he could have all of her if he wanted her.

“I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t, Stranger,” Usagi replied breathlessly as she no longer resisted the desire to let her fingers play over the ripples of his chest and the battle scars littering it, drawing a shaking breath when a rough hand caressed her shoulder, then slid down to the edge of the makeshift bandage. “It’s ok,” she reminded him gently when he hesitated. “Stranger… I want you. You… you _do_ want me, right?” She asked self-consciously. “Still?”

“You know I do, angel,” Trunks promised as he tugged gingerly at the edge of the linen and slowly, carefully peeled it away until he revealed the breast that had been cut, releasing a heavy sigh, a breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding until he found it scarred… but completely healed, the flesh pink, new, and healthy.

The linen came down the rest of the way then, and he smiled down at her as he reached for the strip covering her scarred cheek next, peeling it off to find that the scar wasn’t even as deep as he’d thought it would be. “You know, I’ll be happy to demonstrate all day and all night just how sexy I find the scars, right?” He breathed in her ear as he moved around to her back. Again, he hesitated a moment before drawing down the dressing by a few inches, ready to put it back in place. After all, her back had been the worst of everything by far, so Trunks wouldn’t have been surprised in the least to find it still partially raw and healing.

At the first brush of his fingertips over the center of her back, Usagi instinctively flinched, but when she felt no pain she relaxed, releasing a soft, nervous laugh. “Sorry, I’m fine. I just expected it to hurt,” she explained when he quickly froze in place. “It didn’t, I promise.”

“Good. That’s good. Very good.” Trunks peeled off the rest of the piece of linen then and examined the length of her back with gentle fingertips, smiling when Moon didn’t flinch again, not even once. “All healed, my angel,” he informed her as he reached into the tub to cut the shower on and drew the curtain. “Come on, let’s get all of this salve off of you… and then, I’ll keep my promise.”


End file.
